Giulia Santini, born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1982, is the sole mind behind IKoNA’s production of Unique Conceptual Wearable Sculptures.  

After a degree in Foreign Languages and Literature, and over 15 years in the field of technical product development. In 2012 Giulia Santini finally breached the long-desired world of art and design, and in 2013 founded IKoNA, her art brand, specialized in designing and creation of unique wearable sculptures.

IKoNA sprouts from the Artist’s desire to share with the world her personal journey of growth and self-definition, through confrontation of inner with outer landscapes, reflected in the ever-changing mirror of time.

At the root of her choice to express her art in the form of self-expressive or alter-impressive, wearable pieces, is the belief that the goldsmith’s art, has been overly wronged, in modern times, by the alienating materialistic, and speculative approach reserved to it by Society, and the consequent loss of its original sentimental, artistic and Spiritual value (modernity seems to overlook that among all ancient civilizations the most antique forms of Art are, undoubtedly, jewels and decorative pieces crafted in precious, long-lasting materials, for personal decoration in specific rituals or passages, culturally deemed important, to a person’s life).

Her works stands in open contrast to the current social attitude where jewels are viewed as “frivolous luxury products, often machine-made in large scale, void of any symbolic or conceptual meaning”, and her creations aim at being conceptual portals through which the observer and the artist can find new landscapes of dialogue with each other.

Connection string of the artistic production of the past years is the indelible, but often overlooked, pertinence of mankind to Nature (also intended as Cosmos, and Infinite); humans constant struggle against it and the inevitable reconciliation to it, which can be seen as much in the personality portrait pieces, the historical creations, the natural elements sculptures or the Conceptual pieces.

Being a lover of all Humanistic disciplines, she has absorbed and integrated in her Art elements of a variety of artistic currents (reminiscences of Abstractism, Conceptualism, Futurism, Naturalism, Surrealism, Cubism and Neo-Realism are scattered all over her work).

The merging of symbolic stones and elements, with a linear, almost minimalistic design and unconventional figurative  reproduction characterizes her work, baffling cultural preconception, and daring each of the taboos of the goldsmith’s Bible.

Her works withhold a multidimensional artistic complexity, and a rich intellectual stratification, conveyed often in blatant hermetic simplicity.

 Pregnant of meanings, Impacting and, more often than not puzzling, most of her production appears powerful, whilst maintaining harmonious elegance and a specific rarefied dynamism, almost lulling the observer’s eye to linger,  wander, and find the hidden path in its hollows and planes.  

The purpose of IKoNA’s art is to be embraced, “experienced” and commented by the viewer, as a bridge of open confrontation, and to bind on an even higher level with the collector, who recognizes it as a shared milestone in his own life path and in “Honoring by Living it”, completes the most besieged Artistic Value of the piece, by sharing it endlessly with self and outer world (through wearing it or passing it down generations).