Jewel Debuts“Matriclysm” Exhibition In Venice Through 2026

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Singer-songwriter Jewel, known for her music, has opened her debut art exhibition,“Matriclysm: An Archaeology of Connections Lost,” at Salone Verde in Venice. The exhibition, which features painting, sound installation, sculpture, textiles, and glass, will be on view through November 22, 2026.

Jewel, who experiences synesthesia, a neurological condition that causes her to associate color with sound and see fractals, explained that her creative disciplines are interconnected.“They go together. I wouldn't know how to separate them,” she told Observer.

The exhibition begins outside the entrance with First Mother, a sculpture created in collaboration with Congolese artist Patrick Bongoy. This work references Mitochondrial Eve, the ancestral mother from whom the mitochondrial DNA of all living humans can be traced. Crafted from hessian thread and exposed to the elements, First Mother is designed to disintegrate, prompting reflection on natural decay and impermanence. Visitors are encouraged to touch the piece, setting a tone of slow engagement and embodied experience for the entire show.

Central to“Matriclysm” is what Jewel describes as“undiluted feminine power” portals, which she characterized as generative, embodied, and relational. The exhibition explores complicated and often traumatic histories alongside scientific and natural phenomena, treating memory as a living entity intertwined with ancestry, motherhood, nature, and inherited connections. Jewel created the exhibition for slowness and embodied experience, focusing on darkness, sound, touch, and a sense of passage.

The anchor piece, The Heart of the Ocean, was the first work conceived for the exhibition. Jewel described it as“neuroceutical” artwork designed to interact with the nervous system. While scouting venues in Venice, she envisioned building an instrument that nature could play using data. She questioned whether being loyal to data's shape could affect brainwave states.

Building The Heart of the Ocean involved NASA and 70,000 data points, including 60,000 points of programmable light. Jewel collaborated with the non-profit ORCA (The Open Research Community Accelerator) and Dr. Erin McKiernan, a Professor in the Department of Physics, Biomedical Physics Program at National Autonomous University of Mexico, to study its effects on brainwave states. Preliminary studies revealed that the work induced Theta brainwave states (lucid dreaming) and Alpha brainwave states (meditation). After 12 minutes, participants reached Gamma brainwave states, associated with the highest cognitive function.

Another series, The Seven Sisters, comprises handblown glass orbs with an accompanying soundscape. This work draws from the myth of the Pleiades, considered the oldest shared myth in human history, dating back 200,000 years. Jewel aimed to replicate the unique twinkling of individual stars as a sound wave. To achieve this, she located a physicist who had recorded the light-wave radiation of the Pleiades using the Kepler telescope, obtaining his hard drive for the data. The artist explained that glass was the only medium capable of conveying this story, creating a texture by rolling hot glass over a metal grate at the Toledo Museum under the guidance of its glass master.

The Ceremony series features four sculptures of older women with tree branches emerging from their heads, intended to portray elder women as sources of knowledge and to reframe menopause as an initiation into a different form of power. Jewel noted that menopause is biologically rare, with humans being one of only three mammal species that experience it.

Source: Observer Arts

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