The History of a Safety Pin Necklace: Transnational Colonisation Misrepresented.

Abstract

In this chapter we will study the body ornamentation of colonized non-western cultures (mainly African and Latin American) when using western objects (as a safety pin), which, in turn, could have influenced those other ornamental forms that occurred in western culture along the 20th century. These were defined as absolutely original and modern ready-mades in Western jewellery: in the 1920s, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, the Dada Baroness; in the 1940s Anni Albers and Alexander Reed, or Izabel M. Coles; the punk artists of the 1970s and 1980s, or present authors like Tamiko Kawata Ferguson or Tina Fung Holder. However, our working hypothesis is that these types of objects for ornamentation and these artistic behaviours were previously and already present in other non-western colonized cultures from the moment of their territorial and objectual occupation with the functional products of western culture. We will take into account the possible paths for the diffusion of these influences as well as their transcultural or transregional intersections, and we will investigate the persistence regarding the uses of safety pins and other western cultural elements in the ornamentation of indigenous colonised cultures.