Refusal

Refusal is a chain-constructed sterling silver ring formed from rectangular plates linked by hand-made connections. Its brushed, eroded surfaces read as worn and lived-in, registering use rather than finish. Unlike the other works in Holding Pattern, this ring cannot sustain its structure independently. When removed from the body, it collapses into a fallen architecture – a ruin, or a relic. Only when worn does it cohere into an intelligible form.  

The piece centers the body’s refusal. Where earlier works trace holding, repetition, and orientation, Refusal asks what remains when the body turns away. Its structure depends entirely on the body’s orientation toward it to exist; coherence is not intrinsic, but conditional. Repetition here is exhausted and irregular, rhythm fractured rather than sustained.  

Within the collection, Refusal functions as an epilogue: the trace left after holding collapses, when orientation can no longer be maintained and structure survives only through contact.