Celebrating 30 years of research into her subject matter of apes, Roet has created jewellery to adorn the human form as part of her extended art practice.

“The jewellery pieces question our ideas of beauty, wisdom, age, and evolutionary identity. Ultimately, these
pieces represent our collective connection to our closest animal relative. When you wear the casting of a piece of ape skin, you are wearing a piece of evolutionary history.” — Lisa Roet

The jewellery, worn by all genders, is created from castings collected during Roet’s science and art residencies in research stations and natural history museums worldwide. The orangutan skin texture was sourced from a specimen collected by Alfred Wallace on a research tour of Borneo in 1855. The gorilla skin rubbings and fingerprints are from a baby gorilla Roet played with at Berlin Zoo. The jewellery, cast in recycled sterling silver, is plated with black rhodium representing the fire of the forests, and gold, symbolising precious commodities. Roet also uses ancient materials in her jewellery, such as carved mammoth tusk, jet from petrified wood, and obsidian from volcanic glass, as symbolic of our connection with our evolutionary past.