French grills designer, Juanita Grillz, is changing the way we look at the mouth and its radical expression possibilities. His Instagram is an innovation wheelhouse of grill, face and mouthpiece designs. A lookbook of collaborations, with other forward thinking musicians and visual artists who employ his uniquely oral perspective.
Rooted in a visual arts background, Juanita refuses to see limitations when it comes to what’s wearable on your face. It’s that very belief that has not only revolutionized what’s possible in grill design, but suddenly gives your nose, ears, mouth, cheek bones and neck territory to be artistic palettes. This is no more evident than in Juanita’s lookbook collaboration with Danni Harris for DAZED Magazine. Designer Danni Harris teamed up with Juanita Grillz to explore the innate human-animal connection, how humanity has lost that over time and how that affects our earth now. Beautiful human-animal hybrids were created by Danni, Juanita, Josh Wilkz, Tommy Taylor and Sophie Moore in Harris’ collection ‘The Human Animal’. We caught up with Juanita to delve deeper into the mind of the oral genius and pull the curtain back behind his artistic collabs. From Danni Harris, COUCOU CHLOE and Yung Lean, Juanita Grillz is just warming up. Check it Below: INTERVIEW Sermon 3 Recordings: What peeked your interest to get into jewelry modification and custom grillz? Juanita Grillz: Before the Juanita project I was doing visual arts, and more particularly sculpture. My work talked a lot about the tools available to us to create new identities. The interest in jewelry came very naturally. It was a way to continue sculpting while reducing the size and weight of the objects I was creating. But above all, jewelry makes it possible to make objects come alive, since they are worn by people. For me it was important that these jewels were made to measure, that they completely fit the body since I wanted them to be mutations of the body, not patches. I immediately wanted to make jewelry in the mouth because it is a body space that is very little developed in contemporary jewelry. Yet it is a fascinating place, full of symbolism, meaning, taboos, social codes with which we can interact. S3R: How did you and Danni meet and come to work together? Juanita: It all happened very quickly, she was working on her graduate collection at Central Saint Martins and she asked me if I could collaborate with her on the mouthpieces. I didn’t know her work, but when she sent me some drawings from her collection, I immediately got hooked and knew that our brains would work well together. At that time Ben Ditto had also written to me to say that he would like to do the artistic direction of the mouth pieces shoot. I felt really involved, the questions that her collection raised about the links between humans and animals are also very personal questions. S3R: How do you feel like your styles compliment each other? Juanita: It’s strange I wouldn’t say our styles complement each other, except that she makes the clothes and I was more involved in the jewelry side of things. To tell the truth, I think we felt that we shared a lot of common points, on the symbolism of this collection and the aesthetics, there is a complete trust in the other. We used to tinker together, putting things in each other’s mouths, tinkering with materials. If one of us liked it, we knew the other one would like it too. We liked simple, strong things… that was really the challenge, being sharp, without losing the animality. S3R: Do you have any artists you low key have design ideas for? Juanita: Yes, I’m designing a mask inspired by Erykah Badu, I can’t wait to send her pictures of it, for the moment it’s in the prototyping phase. S3R: What are some of the forward thinking concepts you’re playing with now that get you excited? Juanita: Yes, I am experimenting in my workshop with different materials. I would be interested in creating objects in resins, glass, porcelain, also working with very bright colours. Through Juanita Grillz’s limitless perspective, the world is granted a front row seat in viewing how every part of the human face is a powerful tool for artistic expression.
Otherwise I’d love to make jewelry for concerts. Working with Marilyn Manson is one of my dreams.
I have a lot of collaboration coming with fashion designers. I’m very excited about it because they are very different and the meeting of our works will bring new things, I can feel it.
The Oral Art of Juanita Grillz
