Exploring Halos Through Contemporary Jewellery

Inspired by Virginia Wolfe’s description of life as a ‘luminous halo’, South Korean jewellery designer YunSun Jang created a collection that explores the protection and detachment of the wearer from the world.

Photographed by Sylvain Deleu, the collection ‘I See a Halo Around You’ appears to reference traditional spiritual and religious imagery of icons. The minimally designed jewellery sits on a wearer’s skin and projects a fine line of gold around the head amongst other parts of the body, presenting a protective halo-like space around the figure. YunSun Jang is interested in creating new corporeal and physiological experiences through jewellery: ‘I See a Halo Around You’ takes the notion of a defined space such as that of a spacesuit–a room in which a person lives, breathes and communicates–and explores the way this simultaneously connects us and alienates us from our surroundings.

The golden ring of light, traditionally used to represent the holiness of an individual, has now been refined and explored in a new contemporary direction. Virginia Wolfe believed that life is “a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end,” and YunSun Jang has brought this notion to a new realm of physicality, presenting the halo as a real and tangible entity.