Munich Jewellery week 2023
In basic terms, jewellery may be understood as wearable artwork, a platform for everyday activism, or simply the class of objects closest to the body. Yet jewellery undoubtedly also carries historical, anthropological and environmental legacies, and these require urgent rethinking in light of the ecological disasters and imperial decadence of our present moment. Doing so raises fundamental questions about the contemporary place and potential of jewellery. How can one doubt the very object that is in front of her?
Bodies of Knowledge is an exhibition of work by current and a selection of former students (2018–2023) of the Jewellery – Linking Bodies Department. It showcases a particular attitude towards jewellery – one characterized by constant questioning of the historical, material, environmental and societal contexts within which jewellery is located. This attitude asks us to reconsider, among other things, how we conceive of bodies and their limits. In a world where the human, as a separate, self-contained entity, is no longer the epitome of power and progress, new understandings of the body may open pathways toward new modes of ecological being. Rather than seeking to possess objects, being ecological means moving through and sharing processes and space with other humans, species, and non-human entities. It suggests new relations to space, to the body, to material and to society. It points at potential worlds, as conceived otherwise: bodies are no longer defined by being human or not. Through jewellery, as a practice that fundamentally links all kinds of bodies and allows for both individual and collective contemplation and investigation, we can propose and craft new potentialities for being otherwise.
