The joint project of the online platform TEO by Cosmoscow and the jewelry brand Safo Jewelry is dedicated to the theme of building and exploring one's personal external image. It is a gentle dialogue about attention to one's individuality and how we create it every day—what we seek to conceal and what we keep on display.
Jewelry is one of the markers of individuality and a demonstration of our desires. It is part of our public image, an elegant armor. We put it on to show others what we want to make visible at a given moment: our mood, character, status. At the same time, jewelry is intended not only for the outside gaze but also for ourselves. External images coexist on equal terms with what we would like to keep for ourselves, to cherish as something particularly valuable. Beloved rings, bracelets, earrings, and pendants often carry a certain symbolic weight—whether it is a gift from a loved one, chosen with special care, a memory of a journey, or a family heirloom passed down through inheritance. The very ritual of trying on jewelry becomes intimate: when we put it on, we study ourselves, emphasizing the parts of the body we wish to admire.
In a similar way, at the boundary between the personal and the social, contemporary everyday mobile photography exists. Nadia Koldaeva examines the smartphone photo gallery as a field for analyzing self-presentation. This digital archive of daily life stores what we have deemed worthy of remembering, what we fear losing, and what we would like to return to. When creating or selecting images for publication, we often add external factors to personal value—for example, following trends or, on the contrary, breaking the rules. Yet outside of social media, the phone's memory holds many images hidden from prying eyes: the personal, in need of protection. One such layer of the concealed consists of photographs of the body. Today, alongside the mirror, it is through the photo gallery that we explore ourselves, record changes, choose angles, and strive to understand what we like and what suits us. This last idea finds its continuation in Debora Mech's work, which focuses on shaping the image of femininity through everyday clothing items. In turn, Annushka Broche's sculpture extends the idea of the external environment's influence on our own perception of beauty.
