Artist Pio Abad and jeweller Frances Wadsworth Jones have been working closely together since 2018. One of their ongoing interests is an operation of ‘speculative reconstruction’ centred on the extensive collection of jewels amassed by former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his famously luxury-loving wife Imelda Marcos during their twenty-year rule. Their new commission titled Second-hand Time (2025) is an ornate bronze diadem, modelled after a kokoshnik tiara once favoured by the Russian Romanov dynasty. Post-revolution, Stalin’s government auctioned the piece in 1927, ostensibly to fund his catastrophic agrarian land reforms. The tiara resurfaced after the Marcos regime fell in 1986, as part of assets seized from Imelda Marcos. Though the sale never took place, three decades later this and other priceless jewels were intended to appear on the auction block to fund agrarian land reforms in the Philippines that would also fail—a quirk of history that reads as an almost mystical synchronicity linking repressive regimes across time. The tiara stands in for the legacy of its strange travels throughout the past century and at the same time is an emblem for the grandiose aspirations of the new fascists of today. The nature of how jewellery is worn on the body, and the seductive authority such riches emote, is part of the undeniable auratic quality of these pieces. Second-hand Time is emblematic of the artists’ long-standing attempt to unpack the complex histories of colonialism and authoritarianism through the intimacy of objects.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Pio Abad & Frances Wadsworth Jones and HKW, 2025

WORK IN THE EXHIBITION: Second-hand Time (2025), patinated bronze and metal stand, 142 × 235 × 210 mm (unmounted). Courtesy of the artists