Ädellab, Konstfack: Degree Exhibition 2014

Artist list

Anna Nordström, Carolina Gimeno, Emil Särelind, Hanna Rönnbäck, Jenny Ekerby, Kamran Babrak, Krista Ruohonen, Linda Ottosson, Linnea Bergman, Lisa Fält, Matilda Frid, Paulina Alstorp, Rebecka Huusko Källman, Tilda Dalunde, Tobias Alm, Ulla-Britta Westergren.

This years Bachelor's and Master's Degree students are showing their Exam work at the Konstfack Spring Exhibition 2014.

About the Master's graduates:
Jewellery will touch you. Corpus objects will be touched by you. Understanding the difference between the two kinds of physical interaction with objects is essential in order to comprehend the serious play provided by the work of Ädellab’s graduates.

Jewellery, when worn, possesses a quality of being adoptable into the perception of a physical self; into the intimacy of a perceived identity. The object and the “self” can become identical for certain moments or be in symbioses for other occasions.

Within the field of corpus the objects remain separated from the human body unless they are put to use through a physical interaction. The spoon is put into the mouth, the handle is grasped, or the bowl is lifted. Corpus objects become physically experienced when serving a practical purpose for human beings. When corpus objects are not in use, they are objects with social functions, marking the construction of a specific identity within a social environment.

This social function however, is common for all objects created by the 2014 Master’s graduates. The physical interaction with the pieces serve merely as a vehicle to punctuate our social bodies, to extend the perception beyond normative identities and question the intimacy of the individual in relation to the public realm.

-Karen Pontoppidan, Professor of Jewellery and Corpus Art

About the Bachelor's graduates:
We live here and now, in an everyday that may seem ordinary but which occasionally becomes extraordinary: at once magnificent and grotesque. When this happens, spaces are created where it is possible to discern the actual structures and constituent parts of daily life. The everyday suddenly becomes visible. We can see what it does to us, but also what we do in it. The everyday manifests itself through people, experiences, fantasies, cultures and the things we surround ourselves with.

We meet the works of nine students, nine voices that want to tell us of what they discovered when they immersed themselves in their artistic processes and viewed the world from these vantage points. Several questions arose from this investigative work:

Whose stories are given precedence and whose stories are marginalized or alienated? Can we use objects to create an atmosphere, which allows us to broaden our way of experiencing the world around us? Sometimes the objects do not manifest themselves before us when we need them to, what then happens to the situation we are in and what happens to us? Where is the line drawn between object and subject and how do objects become subjects? Can we express our state of mind through objects? Can we see ourselves in others with the help of objects? Can we use objects to understand why we act the way we do towards each other, and the world as whole?

These nine voices talk of how situations and experiences are captured in objects to communicate inner states and positions to the world. They tell us of how the objects we surround ourselves with meet us through the movement of our bodies, in the physical space and in relation to each other, and how we use objects to show who we are or who we want to be.

-Miro Sazdic Löwstedt, Senior Lecturer in Crafts, with specialization in Jewellery