ESP / EN
Celina Saubidet y Marina Molinelli Wells:
Anatomies of Habitation
C.S. It began twenty years ago. I held a sculpture exhibition in which I modelled sections of different women’s skeletal structures directly onto their bodies. The exhibition consisted of those pieces, alongside life-size photographs of the naked women dressed in their own bones. That’s when I had the idea of creating ornamentation based on nature itself. Since I was working across different scales, I asked Marina - whom I already knew, and who at the time was working in jewellery, and was making geometric pieces unrelated to anatomy - if she could help me develop a collection of jewellery based on bones. That’s where our relationship began, and we became incredibly enthusiastic about it. We made a first collection, which wasn’t particularly successful, but the good thing was that we realised how well we worked together.
M.M.W. I met Celi when she was already an artist. I was still studying Industrial Design, and was very interested in craftsmanship. Of all the disciplines I studied, jewellery was the one I stuck with, after Celi asked me to make a few hand bones. I remember she gave me a photocopy of a hand from an anatomy book. I carved it, using my own hand as a reference.
We also had in common the fact that both our fathers were doctors, so we grew up surrounded by hospital hours and anatomy. That was part of what sparked my fascination with everything related to the human body. Those pieces, which eventually became part of Celi’s sculpture exhibition, marked the starting point. From there, we realised that we had fun together, that we got along well, and that we were excited by the idea of continuing to make things together. What was initially called Joyería Ósea eventually, many years later, became Cabinet Óseo.
Do you consider the human body a territory from which to imagine objects, jewellery and even installations?
C.S. As a sculptor, I have always worked around the human body, using the human figure. At one point I began investigating anatomy; my sculptures focused on certain parts of the body: such as the heart and bones. I believe the human body is a perfect machine. I’m interested in biology, in the microscopic, and its connection with the macro scale of the universe, although ultimately it’s all the same thing.
In sculpture, I used to do this on a large scale. Everything was enormous. When Machi and I joined forces, we decided to take those sculptures that already existed in large format and transform them into portable pieces. That’s how we began developing different collections. Once things started going a little better and people began to understand our proposal, we started creating collections.
We never followed fashion. Fashion doesn’t interest us. We see our accessories as works of art in the form of jewellery. They can also become furniture, or sculptures.
M.M.W. The human body has always been very present in my work, from the start. When you choose to work in jewellery, you are inevitably connected to the body. The idea is that you wear the pieces, with greater or lesser comfort, but you wear them. I have always been interested in scale, and the question of ergonomic, comfortable form. What interested me most was to move away from the small scale and to be able to play with larger dimensions, with objects that might not require such a precise resolution. I think what I enjoyed most was to break away from what I had been doing, and step outside that tactile, human scale.
It was a great match. Beyond the fact that the beginnings of Cabinet Óseo were about bringing together each of our worlds, I think that over the years our work has grown into something much larger. Beyond those extremes of scale, we began finding many interesting things in between, from functional objects to installations. Our work always has a great deal of context. It is never set against a standard white background, like something on a shop shelf.
It must be a challenge for each of you to bring a different sense of scale while preserving your own language and character. I think you’ve achieved something remarkable.
M.M.W. It worked out beautifully, but there wasn’t really much planning involved. Everything happened organically. It wasn’t as though we sat down one day and said, “Right, I’ll do this and you’ll do that…”
C.S. No. Planning really isn’t part of our universe.
M.M.W. We’re not particularly good at planning.
C.S. What was interesting was learning jewellery techniques and taking them to a larger scale, or doing the opposite: taking sculptural techniques and turning them into small mechanisms. That back-and-forth always made everything stronger. Also, we’re very respectful of each other’s ideas, and perhaps overly enthusiastic at times. If one of us comes up with a completely wild idea, the other will never say, “No, no, no..” It’s always, “Okay, go on, let’s try it.” And then we embark on things that sometimes turn out to be monumental, megalomaniacal, ridiculous - but we carry them through, because we’re a little reckless.
We don’t shy away from ideas that might be beyond the budget or beyond reality. When we imagine a huge production, we don’t concern ourselves with that. Then, when we actually have to make it happen, we start to realise that we’ve gone too far, that we need more hands, or that the budget is way out of our league. But we find a way. We’ve always managed ourselves financially. We don’t have sponsors or husbands. Well, we have husbands, but not husbands who put up the money and act as our foundation.
M.M.W. I also think we’ve managed to build a great team, because we couldn’t do even one per cent of what we do if the team was just the two of us. We each have an assistant that specializes in our respective fields, and we also work very well together.
As Celi said, we often take on projects that exceed our own capacity, and even that of our team. So we also move back and forth, assembling larger or temporary teams depending on the project. It isn’t just the two of us, all the time. There’s a constant exchange with other people, with the outside world. I also think that doing such diverse things forces you to experiment a great deal. That’s where you really learn and discover other crafts, other techniques, other possibilities that enrich an idea. Without that resolution, which sometimes comes from an outside specialist, there are things we simply wouldn’t be able to make.
For Proyecto Kavanagh, we made a napkin ring, a door handle and a spoon. You have to be willing to make something you don’t know how to make, and you also have to know how to seek advice from people who really do.
C.S. We love learning new techniques, we take workshops and classes that give us a starting point, and then we begin producing and experimenting ourselves. There’s a lot of experimentation in the studio; that’s actually what we enjoy the most. Making things, being in the workshop, trying things, playing. Above all, maintaining a sense of play. That’s something you should never lose.
M.M.W. So you don’t get bored.
C.S. Especially so you never get bored!
What role do materials and artisanal techniques play in this transformation?
C.S. We are very much artisans. We love the number of hours we spend in the workshop making things. We also bring in other artisans; if they don’t already know a particular technique, we pass it on to them. But there’s always a great deal of exchange throughout the process.
I’d love to know which crafts you have incorporated along the way. Which ones interest you, and which ones have come into your practice?
M.M.W. We can talk about it up to now, because we don’t know what will come next. For example, we work with a younger group who are part of the jewellery team. They work at a somewhat larger scale of goldsmithing, using techniques similar to those of jewellery, although sometimes with different tools. That’s a great help.
Then there are techniques we’ve borrowed from dentistry, for example, where we use silicone to make molds. We don’t use it in exactly the same way dentists do, but we use the same material they use to take impressions of the mouth, because it can reproduce forms with remarkable accuracy and because it dries quickly. That allowed us to take molds of all sorts of natural objects. Without that resource, it would have been much more complicated - not impossible, but more complicated. We work with many materials: iron, welding, resin, polyester, ceramics.
M.M.W. Non-ferrous metals.
C.S. Bronze, alpaca silver, stainless steel. We’ve recently made painted silk scarves as well.
M.M.W. But we made those ourselves.
C.S. Yes, we made them ourselves, taking classes but applying them to the themes of our work.
M.M.W. We’ve experimented very little with 3D printing. Since we didn’t get the result we wanted. As far as techniques go, I don’t know whether we’ll ever fully move into the digital realm. We really love craftsmanship. Our investigations are always more concerned with ways of materialising ideas than with digital solutions.
C.S. Particularly when it comes to sculpture, I start with a drawing to bring the idea down to earth, and then I immediately have to move on to a 3D model. I like the fact that, rather than looking as though I made it on a computer, you can see the gesture of the hand - the gesture of the pliers, which bent slightly this way and then a little that way.
M.M.W. Even though the pieces are always well made, functional and polished, we want them to retain the gesture of the hand. We believe that’s the most important thing we have as human beings.
When you begin working on a project, or have an initial inspiration, is there a direct relationship between the idea and the choice of material?
C.S. Sometimes the material leads us into the development, and sometimes it’s the other way around. There are materials we already know how to handle easily. For example, when I work with iron and I’m making a sculpture, the iron leads me in a certain direction and I follow it. Every piece is very different because the material takes me wherever it wants to go, and I let myself be led.
The same thing happens with polyester resin. Sometimes there are mistakes because a piece is too large and it breaks under its own volume. But extraordinary things emerge from that. I take advantage of that “mistake” and believe that if there’s something there, I should follow it, and I leave it as it is.
M.M.W. When you have an idea, sometimes it’s clearer how to materialise it and which material to use. Other times the challenge comes from the material itself.
For some reason, a few years ago Celi had this megalomaniacal idea of making sculptures out of recycled aluminium cans. She told me about it as casually as if she were suggesting we go and buy a piece of cardboard. “But it’s made with four thousand cans. Four thousand cans” she said, and I said yes to everything, although secretly I thought: we’re never going to manage this. Obviously, we did - with four hundred pairs of hands helping us.
C.S. We’re very driven by whims. You start looking at something through X-rays and think, “Ah, this could work. What if we take the can apart…?” Suddenly you think, “This material is perfect. I have this module - what can I start making with it?” It’s that sense of play: I try, I try, I try.
M.M.W. That’s how a series of wonderful sculptures called Cochayuyos came about. They are up to three metres tall. Some are inspired by the shapes of seaweeds, while others are lichens - the living organisms that complete the cycle of life, transforming what is no longer living into something fertile so that life can continue.
That project was incredible. We worked with a foundation for single mothers and fathers. We taught them the entire craft, including the process of recycling the cans. Obviously, it involved collecting four thousand cans. It was something much larger than what you can perceive when you look at the finished work. That’s when the story behind a piece becomes enormously valuable, because at first glance you might think, “Well, I don’t know, it’s painted aluminium, isn’t it?” But no - it carries an enormous story behind. That’s probably the most emblematic example I can think of where we began with the material itself.
Do you think there is a didactic element to your work - to telling a story through what you make?
C.S. There are several things at play. In the case of the lichens and Cochayuyos, for example, we taught the technique to this group where only women applied. This was their first experience with manual work, only one of them had worked, because they were very young. I believe that she had worked at McDonald’s. I remember how moving it was to see them realise that they could make useful things with their hands, rather than simply scrolling on their phones. They began to discover that they had that ability, that power. In fact, one of the women went on to study metalworking.
M.M.W. She had a father who was a blacksmith, but it had never occurred to her that she could follow that path herself. This work somehow awakened her curiosity. As Celi said, I think the power that comes from being able to make things with your own hands is enormous.
We still have material from that project and continue to make the pieces because we like them, and because they carry such an interesting story behind.
C.S. We’re interested in drawing attention to those things that need to be preserved within nature. We’re always looking at what the human eye sometimes overlooks, either because of its size, or because it’s something you encounter in everyday life without really seeing it. We like to bring those things into focus.
Even thinking about the extinction of an object: capturing it and leaving it there as a witness to something that could disappear at any moment.
At times, there’s an archaeological quality to your work, followed by a desire to immortalise a particular kind of knowledge. Over time, you incorporated plant forms, materials and animals. How did this expand the initial universe of Cabinet Óseo?
C.S. At first, we worked strictly with human anatomy. Independently, each of us had started collecting objects we found in nature. The expansion began when we learned an electrolysis technique and thought: “All these organic objects that are going to disintegrate at any moment - we’re going to immortalise by giving them a layer of copper.”
So we started taking everything we had - objects that were almost completely decomposed- and ended up with cupboards and boxes and boxes full of things. That’s when the work expanded into the different kingdoms of nature, which are also ultimately the same thing, because they are all made of tissue.
M.M.W. Only at the beginning were we more focused on the human body. Once we had worked through the collections and their fundamental parts -the bones, the skin, the wisdom teeth, stem cells and the heart- the whole question of the living kingdoms emerged naturally.
C.S. Things started appearing. Suddenly there were dragonfly wings, which didn’t quite fit within the more strictly human anatomical framework. We kept them to one side, pending, until eventually we thought, “Come on, let’s do it,” and incorporated them.
If you look at it from a microscopic perspective, all tissues begin to overlap. You can’t tell whether you’re looking at the tissue of a bone, a wing or human skin. Within the living kingdoms of nature, humans are animals. So that’s where the divisions came in, and the human body naturally found its place within them.
What new shapes or mediums would you like to explore now?
C.S. This project was our first major work with geometry. We found it an interesting challenge because it made us move away from the organic, and got us thinking architecturally instead. We began looking at the building from every possible angle, and eventually focused on one of its elements: the floor plan of the tallest tower.
M.M.W. During the process, it was wonderful to recover some of the gestures that the architecture had left behind in this iconic building. We fell in love with the famous “pinch”, for example, and decided to translate it into an object and create a napkin ring.
It was a major challenge because it’s a geometric piece that begins as a flat plane. It took us a long time to make the dimensions work and get the proportions right. It’s completely different to see it in a huge space like the hall of this building and then translate it into an object, where it becomes a fragment. For the door handle, we were inspired by the floor plan of the building, as Celi mentioned. Then we made the handle of a spoon, which also relates to the view towards the square, obviously in a simplified form.
We found the intersections of the angles and the play between the textures and the windows incredibly interesting. It’s a very rich piece of architecture. It was easy -in the sense that, if we’d been given more time, we would have made many more things! It was fun to work with something outside the living kingdoms. A building: something concrete, and entirely outside our more familiar universe.
11/08/2026
13:30 HRS
Photo credits:
Emma Livingston
Celina Saubidet specialised in Sculpture at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts and attended painting and sculpture workshops with Carlos Scaglione, Ernesto Levin, Juan Doffo and Juan Carlos Distefano, among other teachers who contributed to her early training. The daughter of a doctor, Saubidet developed an interest in human anatomy and surgical instruments, which later found expression in the design language of Cabinet Óseo. She also took part in various art, staging and artistic writing workshops with figures including Fabiana Barreda, Rubén Szuchmacher, Tulio de Sagastizábal and Silvia Gurfein. This creative background propelled her own artistic enquiry, which has taken shape in objects, wearable sculptures and works at different scales. Her artistic exploration has led to Cabinet Óseo installations at the MALBA Museum, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and Casa Victoria Ocampo, home to the National Arts Fund. She has also participated in exhibitions at the Recoleta Cultural Centre, Casa FOA, arteBA and Chandon Art Ground, among others.
MARINA MOLINELLI WELLS
Marina Molinelli Wells is an industrial designer who graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires (FADU–UBA) and has also worked as a design lecturer. She taught in her own studio, giving jewellery classes and emphasising the importance of craftsmanship. Her training has included courses and workshops in airbrushing techniques, special effects, casting, glass, enamel and modelling, among other disciplines. She learned the craft of jewellery-making at Jorge Castañón’s Taller La Nave. Together with Francisca Kweitel, she ran Metalistería, a space in Palermo dedicated to the sale and exhibition of contemporary jewellery. Molinelli Wells is the daughter of a surgeon. This inherited legacy became the starting point for the creation of Cabinet Óseo: the jewellery, accessories and interior design studio she founded with Celina Saubidet in 2004.