Amphibian Living

Amphibian Living

Thoughts on Munich Jewellery Week, jewellery in a digital world, and translations between spheres.

Written in English.

These past few weeks, I have been very preoccupied by thoughts about art jewellery in a digital future. How can tangible objects, made of “real” materials in the “real” world and defined by their relationship to the body, be translated into a virtual sphere? Can we have virtual bodies? And can jewellery exist on our screens and in our imaginations only?

I have no answer; these questions crowd my brain as I try to fall asleep at night, making me wonder about the future of my art and craftsmanship in a world that has been catapulted into digitalization by Covid. In Germany alone, some companies have leapt ahead five years in a only couple of months, others still send faxes and prefer to be paid in cash. This is no judgement, just a statement. Even looking at my own group of friends, colleagues and clients: Some are talking about NFTs, others refuse to utilize the internet. I believe that there is power in being fluent in the analogue as well as the digital sphere, a sort of amphibian in a changing world.  It’s truly exciting to be alive in such times, feeling the shift beneath my feet.

To me, it’s also exciting to be faced with such an unknowable future – really, the only thing we can say for sure is that the future will be utterly, unimaginably different from our pasts. I don’t think we even understand how different life will be thirty years from now.

 Meanwhile, Munich Jewellery Week has come and gone, the event obviously having been cancelled due to our current Covid-19 restrictions. Some institutions, groups and individuals have attempted to take the event online, hosting discussions, virtual exhibitions and talks, and distributing print magazines, most notably Current Obsession with their compendium of jewellery-related articles and editorials in this year’s Munich Jewellery Week 2021 edition.

 But I have to admit: Personally, I feel a huge Munich-Jewellery-Week-shaped hole in the universe. There is something missing. What about all the energy? The field of art jewellery heavily relies on tactility, and it is incredibly difficult to fully appreciate these complex, three-dimensional art pieces on a flat screen or page - these pieces that often surprise us with a unique texture, an unexpected juxtaposition of materials that we simply can’t “get” without seeing (and sometimes touching) the real thing. More than that, these art pieces are exquisite little storytelling worlds that exude their own energy field, a mysterious force you can only feel when face to face with the piece.

 I like to think that it’s not only the energy of the materiality that we feel, but the fact that it was hand made by a human being. You can detect the invisible human traces on it, the indistinct web of criss-crossing micro-movements of a highly skilled artist. It reflects the imprint of this particular artist’s visual language. Compare this to the image framed by your laptop’s silver screen (or perhaps even spiderwebbed by your broken smartphone display). While a jewellery piece is arresting and intriguing on the screen, it is not fully comprehensible in the same way.

So how can we, I wonder, learn to speak these two languages with the same fluency? How can we translate the tangible 3D into the digital? Should we even? How can makers use digital possibilities to amplify their stories, and analogue techniques to create an imprint of their being that will touch us emotionally on a level that digital art cannot? I do think we are moving into a world where neither one of these realms of being can do without the other. How can we become amphibians in this sense?

My POMEGRANATE FANTASY brooch in an imaginary orchard created by illustrator Benjamin Langford, featuring jewellery by Vika Tonu, Birgit Wimmer, Suyu Chen, Marina Voronina, Barbora Lexová, Anne Irving and Emma Rose Bennett, Geesche Arning, H2ERG, Arielle Brackett, Linsey Fontijn, Mercedes Palmer-Higgins, Dawoon Jeong, Cecilia Kesman, Idil Laslo, Mariangela Jewellery London, Zsófia Neuzer, Mayumi Okuyama, Dorothea Schippel, and Larissa Thiel.

Munich Jewellery Week 2019

Current Obsession map of all the different locations at Munich Jewellery Week, and my constant companion. It’s really quite impossible to see everything.

The contemporary jewellery scene is a type of parallel world, and being part of Munich Jewellery Week makes you feel as if you’ve just slipped into the land of Harry Potter. As an initiate, you are privy to a bright world that puts wearable art at the centre of every thought and action. Having just returned from this immersive experience, my mind is still radiant with ideas.

 As you walk around in this parallel Munich, you notice bright orange markers designating every one of the 90+ jewellery related events taking place all over the city during this week and marked on a corresponding map. You can easily spot your fellow MJW-initiates, clearly recognizable by the conspicuous brooches and neckpieces they wear, usually their own creations. No-one else wears brooches like that.

 Moving around in this strange world, on the outskirts of pragmatic life but filled with boundless excitement, I was constantly oscillating between extreme, almost euphoric inspiration, and the most humbling, crushing sense of inadequacy. This is emotionally exhausting. Between gawking over my personal jewellery idols’ work, meeting friends, travelling all over the city, and feverishly planning my own next collection, there wasn’t much time for sleep either.

Below are some of the exhibitions, collectives and individual contemporary jewellers whose work spoke to me the most, in no particular order. Apart from the obvious grandeur of the SCHMUCK (the oldest contemporary jewellery contest of its kind) and TALENTE competitions, and the dazzling array of prestigious galleries featuring the stars of the jewellery world, I was particularly impressed by a Korean display done by the Korean Craft & Design Foundation. Their work was wildly experimental and colourful and daring, and at the same time meticulously executed with truly superior craftsmanship. I was in awe.

A colour catalogue of the Korea Craft & Design Foundation display at Munich Jewellery Week 2019.

Other exhibitions that almost bewildered me with their sheer volume of ideas and different experimental jewellery approaches were 21 Grams, held at Galerie Handwerk, Schmuckismus at the Pinakothek der Moderne, and Interiores, an exhibition by Chilean jewellery collective Joya Brava. I particularly love how Joya Brava, as a group, displays a visual language that manages to marry ancient traditions and organic materials (such as weaving and felting techniques; materials like textiles, wool, straw, horse hair) with refreshingly experimental designs and new interpretations.

A brooch by Kira Fritsch. Actually a picture of a brooch.

Individual artists whose work made my heart beat faster than it should, were, amongst many others:

• Kira Fritsch (unfortunately none of her recent work which I loved so much is shown anywhere online, but luckily I have a card of a black twig-like brooch),

• Liana Pattihis, whose enamelled chain work is breathtaking,

• Carina Shoshtary, with her meticulously assembled graffiti-scaled organic forms,

• Jilian Moore, with her deliciously glossy, brightly coloured acrylic creatures,

• Andrea Wippermann, with her delicate imaginary compositions,

• Vera Siemund, a long time favourite of mine, and

• Sanna Wallgren, who must be one of the youngest people ever to participate in SCHMUCK.

China and silver chain brooch by Liana Pattihis.

Of course, there were many more whose work I found inspiring, but those above definitely touched me on a very personal, subjective level.

See you next year, Munich Jewellery Week!