“A diamond is forever.” – De Beers advertising slogan, 1948 Two sentences that defined the perception of a mineral – and of an entire ideology. They speak not of chemistry, but of identity. Of permanence. Of the promise the market extends to both body and soul: that you will be loved, forever – if you possess. In this context, the diamond is not consumed - it is believed in. Ema Bregović’s art does not begin with form, but with discourse. In the *Diamonds* cycle, the artist does not work with traditional notions of sculpture as representation, but develops an object-based semiotics – a language of the body in space, and within ideology. This body of work represents an act of deconstruction: an intervention into the visual economy of power, status, and symbolic capital. Starting from the diamond as a cultural symbol that has sublimated the industrial, emotional, and gender tensions of contemporary society, Bregović constructs a series of tactile narratives in which contemporary form intersects with archaic impulses. Rather than affirming the diamond as an object of desire, she dissects it to reveal its socio-political infrastructure: exploitation, fetishization, and marketing sublimation. It is crucial to understand that the diamond, as a cultural phenomenon, carries the burden of a multilayered history: from the brutal colonial exploitation of African mines, through the bloody conflicts it has financed, to the sophisticated advertising campaigns that transformed it into a normative symbol of marital fidelity and class belonging. For much of the history of art and craft, the diamond was not the dominant symbol of power. Courts favored sapphires, rubies, and emeralds – stones rich in color, symbolic of spiritual and political meaning. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, artistic objects celebrated spectrum and ornament, not transparent clarity. It was only in the mid20th century, through De Beers’ aggressive marketing campaign, that the diamond became a cultural standard for loyalty, eternity, and ownership. A myth born of marketing – one we now observe as if it had always been true. Bregović’s work exposes this historical asymmetry of value. “Carbon under pressure,” writes the artist – and this phrase becomes the leitmotif of the entire series. Bregović uses the language of sculpture to dismantle the iconography of power. Her works are objects of resistance – visually seductive yet semantically destabilizing. They compel us to ask: what is value? Who determines it? And why do we so readily believe in it? The series consists of several sculptures that originate from archetypal forms, only to be transformed into something enigmatic, almost subversive. The ring with a wooden “diamond,” for instance, functions as a precisely constructed paradox: a material that, in form, assumes the symbol of eternity, yet by nature – rots, burns, cracks, reacts to humidity and time itself. Instead of confirming permanence, this object negates it – a visual testimony to the disintegration of the symbol under the weight of its own illusion. Another key piece in the series is the monumental ring wrapped in barbed wire, where the diamond rises as geometric perfection, held by a chain of pain. The ring – symbol of promise and tenderness – is here cloaked in a material that wounds, tears, and warns. It cannot be worn – it can only be endured. In this object, love is not idealized: it becomes a zone of conflict, a vow in which the line between protection and imprisonment begins to blur. The armored diamond in the form of a miniature tank made of reinforced metal becomes a metasculpture. It incorporates historical narratives – from luxury to militarization. In this collision of kitsch and force lies a critique of consumerist aggression, proprietary fetishism, and the post-socialist aesthetic of power. This sculpture functions as a visual paraphrase of relational aesthetics – an object that does not illustrate, but unveils the psychodynamics of society. One of the most poignant works in the series is the sculpture of a dreidel, carved from white marble and inscribed with gilded Arabic characters. The dreidel is a traditional Jewish toy used during Hanukkah – a four-sided spinning top bearing the Hebrew letters נ (nun), ג (gimel), ה (he), and ש (shin), forming the acronym of the phrase “Nes gadol haya sham” – “A great miracle happened there.” In the game, each letter determines the outcome of a move: “nothing,” “half,” “all,” or “add.” The player may win the entire pot – or lose everything. The dreidel becomes a miniature model of the world: a cycle of uncertainty, a gamble with fate. In Bregović’s version, the dreidel loses its Hebrew letters and gains engraved Arabic script. Through this shift of language, the artist builds a political and poetic tension between two peoples, two spiritualities, two historical truths. This dreidel does not belong to a child – it belongs to history. Its rotation symbolizes the ongoing struggle between chaos and balance, a destiny suspended between play and catastrophe. The combination of Jewish form and Arabic text is not provocation – it is elegy. A remembrance of a world that could have been whole, but became fractured. In the contemporary context, the sculpture can be read as a palimpsest of post-memory and frozen trauma. In this context, it is also important to emphasize the meaning of the term *Aleph* – in Jewish tradition, it is the first letter, the number 1, but also the silent point of origin of all that exists: soundless, yet the source of all sound. Invisible but foundational, it symbolizes unity and the origin of everything visible – like a silent force holding the structure of the world together. Across all the works runs a consistent strategy of material contradiction – what appears precious is coarse; what is heavy conveys lightness; what is eternal bears witness to impermanence. Bregović consistently applies the principles of dissident iconography – dominant symbols are drawn into spaces of doubt, irony, and empathy. Simultaneously, the works evoke the logic of “metaphysical minimalism” – a reduced form in the service of complex conceptual articulation. It is crucial to stress that the works from the *Diamonds* series do not function as cynical caricatures of the world of luxury. Quite the opposite. Bregović approaches her objects with analytical precision and poetic attentiveness. Each form is composed carefully – not to offend the symbol, but to interrogate it. There is no satire in these objects – there is sorrow, lucidity, and that rare quality in contemporary art: tender irony. These works invite interpretation – not only visual, but also social, political, and emotional. They are not decorative; they are epistemological tools – artistic objects that generate discourse. Or, in the words of Rosalind Krauss, “differential fields of meaning.” They seem as if they belong in museum vitrines, yet they look as though they were recovered from the margins of civilization. And it is precisely this ambivalence - between the monumental and the marginal – that gives them authenticity and strength. In an age where affective regimes of consumption are intertwined with a crisis of authenticity, the diamonds of Ema Bregović do not shine as glittering fetishes, but as optical engines of critical thought – tools for understanding the world we have inherited, and the one we are in the process of creating. Dejan Aleksić