Avra'Am
Drawing on Algerian fibula traditions and North African Jewish silversmithing, Adam Anderson explores identity through the ritual of object-making.
Avra’Am (אברהם) is a fibula (brooch) through which a ritual of material, spiritual, and bodily reclamation is enacted. Through the enduring pain of October 7th and the longing and love for my family, people, and land, Avra’Am is the embodiment of a specifically Jewish story of continuation, survival, and resistance to erasure. Moreover, through its tracing of time from ancient history to the future of Algerian Jewry, it is a refusal to allow my identity to be dismembered, devalued, displaced, or dehumanized. As an Israeli living in the Australian diaspora, this type of creative output is my contribution to my people from across the globe.
Avra’Am is a hand-forged fibula made of recycled sterling silver. The dialogue between my diasporic present and the ancient form of the fibula is grounded in the traditional use of these hefty silver objects as simultaneous decorations, the transportable wealth of women, garment closures, and identity signifiers worn by Jewish and Amazigh women in the broader region of North Africa.
The fibula’s ancient path— from a masculine Roman utility to a feminine North African talisman— is retraced here through a queer Jewish body with his gaze fixed upon Jewish futurity. Avra’Am is, in this sense, a Zionist fetish— a term I have coined to contextualise my production of exquisite objects that bind body and symbol. In Jewish hands, it becomes a decolonial tool of survival and self-empowerment: beauty turned into a weapon of sovereignty, devotion, and reclamation.
A massive 44.75-carat Brazilian amethyst crowns the decorative pin portion of the fibula, supported by two smaller natural blue Cambodian zircons positioned at the terminals of the fibula’s ring. The gemstones weave Avra’Am’s historical approach into a contemporary framework. The color references royalty and high priesthood, especially in the context of ancient Mediterranean cultures, where purple-dyed cloth from the murex shell was a marker of divine or imperial status. In this piece, that symbolism elevates the full breadth of Jewish Algerian culture— its aesthetics, rituals, language, and historical depth. I am an inheritor and custodian of that wealth.
The blue zircons are strategically located at the threshold of a fibula’s opening and closing like glinting blue deflectors against the evil eye. Zircon is a gemstone that appears in our tradition— identified by some scholars as one of the 12 stones in the priestly breastplate, corresponding to ‘leshem’.
Forged in recycled sterling silver, the piece draws on silver’s traditional link to lunar light and the moon as keeper of Jewish time. A screwdriver and hammer created the stamped border that frames the piece, along with the Hebrew letters א (aleph) and ש(shin)— representing two of the names of God (Adonai and Shaddai). Together, the two letters also spell the word Esh (fire), evoking divine light as well as human passion, illumination, and survival— a nod to the Jewish silversmiths of North Africa as amulet-makers, believed to wield supernatural powers of protection.
A twisted silver wire Menorah anchors the design, a symbol that predates the Star of David and speaks to our unity, endurance, and Temple devotion that bound us to the land. The Menorah, once a symbol of shattered sovereignty under Rome, is reclaimed here as it is in the emblem of modern Israel. A decorative chain links one side of the fibula to the other, referencing the traditionally paired North African use of such objects as garment fasteners worn on the left and right shoulders. Often, these fibulae would be adorned with talismanic silver beads symbolizing fertility and abundance suspended by chains.
Avra’Am’s part-triangular, part-rectangular form evokes the gold fibulae my grandmother, Rachel Arlette Malki (née Cohen), carried when fleeing Algeria in the early 1960s. Those heirlooms, later stolen, should have passed to my mother and her sisters. Their loss is emblematic of the broader erasure of Jewish Algerian silversmithing, a tradition Avra’Am insists on restoring and continuing.
Karti is sacred armor wrought in the Jewish Algerian silverwork tradition, summoning the protective power of matrilineal guardians. Karti was forged in the days following October 7th.
Aleph reclaims the yellow badge imposed by oppressive sumptuary laws— from dhimmitude to Nazi Germany— and transforms it into a floral shield. Forged in brass, titanium, silver, and heliodor, it is a defiant emblem against the lust for Jewish death.
Adam Anderson’s art practice merges metalsmithing, performance, and photography to centre the body as a site of identity and its plural negotiations. His self-made jewellery, garments, and makeup function as Zionist fetish (a term informed by Michel Leiris and William Pietz) objects drawn from his lived experience as an Israeli of Jewish Algerian ancestry, and as a queer migrant living in regional Australia.
The way material culutre functions as both memory and resistance here is powerful. What stands out is how the fibula moves through time and gender, from Roman utility to North African womens wealth to a contemporary queer body. That trajectory itself is an argument about continuity and adaption. The detail about the stolen grandmother's fibulae adds a particular weight, turning this from purely symbolic work into somethign that actually fills a vacancy. I work with traditional craft objects occaisionally and the tension between historical form and present urgency is always tricky to navigate without collapsing into nostalgia or losing the thread entirely.