Materials, Symbolism and Cultural Identity: New Voices from the Bursary Scheme

Friday 25 September

Talk: 9.30am to 10.30am

Free entry with a Fair ticket – registration essential

Dr Frances Parton, Curator at The Goldsmiths’ Company, in conversation with Morvarid Alavifard and Makila Nsika. Introducing two makers joining Goldsmiths’ Fair through the Bursary Scheme, this conversation explores how material, symbolism and cultural heritage inform contemporary practice. Together, they discuss how identity, memory and place become embedded in objects through craft.

About Morvarid Alavifard

Morvarid Alavifard is a precious-metal artist based at Yorkshire Artspace, where she was awarded a Fellowship in 2024. Her work is primarily rooted in silversmithing techniques, and her practice draws from her lived experience as an Iranian woman, exploring how objects can carry memory and emotion.

She holds an MA in Jewellery and Metal from the Royal College of Art (2022), supported by the Behrens Foundation Bursary Scholarship, and a First-Class BA in Jewellery and Objects from Birmingham City University. Following her MA, she was a resident at the Bishopsland Educational Trust, where she received both an award and a bursary.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Morvarid’s practice has empowered her to dream and share her voice. Through her work, she aims to allow others to experience, feel, and dream through their senses.

Her creative practice explores multi-sensory objects crafted from precious materials. At the core of her artistic expression is the idea that destruction can become a form of creation, reflecting a process of self-exploration throughout her creative journey. Through a poetic relationship with the materials she uses, she channels evocative energy into her work, creating pieces that captivate viewers and resonate deeply with their emotions.

About Makila Nsika

Award-winning designer and maker behind M.kala, Makila Nsika creates contemporary jewellery that bridges cultural memory, material innovation, and contemporary design. Her work balances the precision of emerging technologies with the organic fluidity of nature, resulting in sculptural pieces that feel both refined and elemental. Collaborating with artisans in Congo, she works to revive endangered making traditions while exploring unconventional organic materials, including the use of palm nut kernel as a sustainable alternative to endangered precious wood. Through an experimental and research-led approach, her work reimagines traditional techniques within a contemporary jewellery context, reflecting themes of transformation, identity, and sustainability.

Material experimentation sits at the heart of Makila’s practice. Organic surfaces and engraved textures are developed through an intuitive process that values imperfection, tactility, and transformation. Influenced by Congolese visual language, domestic rituals, and inherited forms of making, the work explores the dialogue between past and present, local traditions and global contemporary culture. By translating these references into contemporary sculptural jewellery, each piece becomes a reflection of cultural continuity and change — carrying stories of resilience, transmission, and evolving identity.