'MIRRORGEMS - M-5'

Art jewellery brooch in blackened silver with a discarded piece of a mobile phone screen as the 'mirror'. "People used to think to find answers of the past and future peeking through mirrors. A tradition also found with the Aztecs, where they used black Obisidan stone. We spend more and more time staring at the phone screen. Our phones have become very precious. We look for photos, maps, directions, recipes, memories, appointments, weather forecasts, news, traffic and even love. These mirror screens have become part of our lives. I want to show these old screens as something precious, gem-like, contained in organic structural shapes of silver".
"My passion for all art and design disciplines is in wearable art. For me, a jewellery piece is an invitation for reflexion. I like when my pieces activate the memories of the users, personal as well as collectively and when the pieces can tell a story.”

Sotelo studied architecture at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico city and continued with an MA in Fine Arts at London at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She was part of the incubator studio program sponsored by the Arts Council of England. Back in Mexico she was awarded with the “Jovenes Creadores” scholarship by FONCA. She was selected for “Artemergente”, National Biennale in Monterrey, Mexico. Later on she was selected for an art residency in La Curtiduria in Oaxaca. In 2009 she began working and developing her “wearable art” project. Made out of different materials and forms assembled in non-conventional ways the jewellery she crafts as well as the art pieces are unique. Her pieces have been featured around the World: in the MoMA Store in New York within the ‘Destination Mexico’ platform, at the AGO Museum in Toronto, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, at Bettina Flament Gallery in Lille, at Marion Friedmann Gallery in London, at Galeria Mexicana de Diseño in Mexico City, at the 4th IEEB International experimental printmaking Biennale in Rumania, at “Think Again: New Latin American Jewellery” at the MAD museum in New York, at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Seattle. She participated in the “Urdimbres Itinerantes” National textile Biennial in Mexico, the “Botánica” exhibition at Medellín Ciento Setenta y Cuatro gallery and at the Hernandez museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 2012-2015 she was director in Mexico for the Otro-Diseño Foundation for Cultural Cooperation and Development, a non-profit organization based in the Netherlands. She has also collaborated as a freelance designer for the famous Mexican silver brand TANE. In 2009 she began working and developing her "wearable art" project. Made out of different materials and forms assembled in non-conventional ways the jewellery she crafts as well as the art pieces are unique. Sotelo develops her work out of a strong concept and idea, with a narrative and story. They are conceptual works, where the wearer is invited to interact and think.