Macarena Bernal b.1982, El Salvador, Chile. Chilean national, resident of New Zealand since 2012, and a citizen since 2018. She has a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Finis Terrae University in Santiago, an Advanced Diploma in Jewellery Practice from MIT in Auckland, a Post Graduate Degree and a master’s degree from the Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin School of Arts.

Bernal chooses Contemporary Jewellery as her medium for its wearability offers interactivity. In her work she explores alternative ideas of value in jewellery by capitalising on the bonds between jewellery and wearer, propounding jewellery as wearable forms of archive, or using it as a platform to make sociopolitical statements.