With contorted birds of flight, unfeasibly large disembodied limbs and an absent-minded damsel at the fore, Miu Miu’s brand new jewellery campaign is creepily chimerical. Yet, the mystical plug feels ultimately unbridled and innocent. Given the name A Remedy, this glittering project created in collaboration with surrealist artists Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg – who also crafted Miu Miu’s AW22 bijoux – expresses, “the wish to escape with humour and gentleness,” according to the twosome.

Mrs Prada, who first crossed paths with the pair twelve years ago, notes in her dossier that three annums after their initial meeting she exhibited their work at the Fondazione Prada. “Since then, our dialogue has been constant. It has been so interesting to see how their work developed through time, encompassing different mediums, and always eager to confront with a new mindset,” she articulates. “This is exactly at the core of our A Remedy project with Miu Miu, following the well-established tradition of ‘Artists as Jewellers’, but with a completely contemporary attitude.”

Djurberg and Berg also undertook artistic direction for the intimate, accompanying campaign. Here, through Julien Martinez Leclerc’s distorted lense we see otherworldly clay creatures, kleptomaniacal grouse and a spindly, cadaverous hand crawling up the shoulder of the spawn of a superstar. The celebrity spawn in question here is 19-year-old actress Isadora Bjarkardóttir Barney: Bjӧrk’s baby. Yes, that Bjӧrk – the Icelandic superstar renowned for her organic soundscapes that bridge the natural and the technological. With A Remedy, Barney assumes her starring role and enters the magical dominion of Miu Miu muses.

Sporting precious pendants and kaleidoscopic hardware on her fingers, in her hair and around her neck, the emergent cross-disciplinary creative is circumscribed centre stage. The adornments upon her reference Djurberg and Berg’s colourful 2015 sculpture series, A Thief Caught in the Act, in which whispers of mischief echo in the fluorescent lighting and gangly Aves peck away at colour-coated pill capsules. But back to 2022, entirely tactile floral figures, naïve animal moulds and lusterous pill-like beads come composed in resin and galvanised metal with a nickel-free gold finish. Plus, everything on offer is hand-finished, polished, assembled and decorated.

But the allure of the spell-binding artefacts doesn’t end with the adornments – oh no – because according to the design-duo, this was an auspicious opportunity to be playful and embrace passionate individualism. With fantasy running through their veins, the ornaments are disseminated in quirky boxes emblazoned by Miu Miu branding and painted with an amalgamation of flora and fauna in a saccharine fondant palette. Inside, a carillon plays a sprightly composition, erected by Berg. All in all, the bizarre bling was surely conceived to be cherished.

Photography by Julien Martinez Leclerc.

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