Nexit. PXL-MAD School of Arts. BA Degree Show 2025

Artist list

Neree DeVisscher, Yasmine Lemmens, Emily Salaets, Lela Van Dam, Marie Van Vyve, Hanne Verellen, Okke Wouters

During the second semester of the 2024-2025 academic year, the Jewellery Design, Gold- and Silversmithing department students at PXL-MAD School of Arts Hasselt dedicated their efforts to developing unique projects.

Nérée De Visscher translated the fleeting nature of music into wearable, lasting forms that capture the love, loss, and ephemeral beauty at the heart of Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Yasmine Lemmens created jewellery from her own insecurities, in which authenticity and self-assurance play an important role in moments of uncertainty. Emily Salaets drew inspiration from the straightforwardness and the visual attributes of protest movements to create activist jewellery that comments on the current political climate. Lela Van Dam explored childlike wonder through playful jewellery made from nostalgic materials like Scoubidou, resulting in pieces celebrating creativity, emotion, and the joy of making. Marie Van Vyve translated a selection of principles from brutalist architecture into jewellery design. Rough textures, visible constructions and honest use of materials were reworked into wearable sculptures. In Serving GrandMa Energy, Hanne Verellen explored how she can combine her interests in grandma hobbies and the jewellery field by playing with materials and looking outside of the jewellery box into her grandmother’s closet. Okke Wouters transformed found materials into jewellery that reflects consumption, pollution, and the human relationship with nature.


Guiding teachers BA projects and papers: Frederik Aerts, Patrick Ceyssens, Nedda El-Asmar, David Huycke, Wes Nijssen, Audi Pauwels, Nadia Sels, Jenny Stieglitz, Anneleen Swillen, Wim Van der Celen, Hanneke Van Hage, Ellen Vrijsen, Karen Wuytens.


Nérée De Visscher
Unseen - Unheard – Untouched 
Music is fleeting, vanishing the moment the last note fades, yet it moves us deeply. Every song must end, but this project seeks to preserve that ephemerality by transforming music into tangible, wearable forms. Inspired by Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, each piece draws from the opera’s structure, emotion and narrative. Its three central characters—Amore, Euridice, and Orfeo —are reimagined through material, colour and form in the Unseen - Unheard - Untouched collection. Building on these forms, a second collection emerged, dedicated to the mythical Eurydice. It captures her elusive presence: minimal yet fluid, like music itself. Influenced by Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the final presentation merges sound, story, and form into one immersive experience, reflecting on love, loss, and the haunting beauty of what slips just out of reach.


Yasmine Lemmens
Juwelen die spreken (Jewellery That Speaks)
From a young age, I have been interested in how we show ourselves to the outside world. Most importantly, how can we stay true to ourselves? This jewellery series is about being seen in your unique authenticity, where the wearer can feel self-confident in moments of insecurity. I was inspired by the fashion world, with the relationship between clothing and its translation into jewellery playing an important role in my work. At the same time, the jewellery has a particular sensitivity and shows fragility through the irregularity of the crocheted pieces. This way, strength and self-confidence play a prominent role, while vulnerability also has a place. The jewellery was created from my own insecurities and acts as an extension of myself. They are made for people who want to express themselves without words, through jewellery that offers self-confidence without suppressing one's unique authenticity.


Emily Salaets
Luid en Rechtuit (the time and place is always/unapologetically activistic)
The current political climate is characterised by uncertainty. Rights that feel self-evident to many are being taken away from certain people. Therefore, it is important to always stand up for your values and fight against intolerance. Neutrality shows acceptance, satisfaction with one's situation, and indifference toward someone else's. Luid en Rechtuit  is a collection of jewellery for people who want to shout from the rooftops that they disagree with something and want to fight for change. The collection is based on the visual characteristics of a protest march. Not everyone who wants to make their voice heard always wants to do so in a vocal way with a lot of volume, however; this does not take away their activist drive. Luid en Rechtuit consists of activist jewellery as loud and unabashed as the chanting of protest songs and slogans on a banner.


Lela Van Dam
Chunkies
This project is a search for my childlike wonder through jewellery design. Growing up, I noticed that my playful, carefree attitude was fading. That's why I returned to materials and techniques from my childhood, such as scoubidou. By scaling up these threads and experimenting with them, I explored how I could experience wonder again. This process resulted in three collections: Changeable Chunkies, Funky Chunkies, and Frunkies. Changeable Chunkies are necklaces you can assemble with separate parts, knots, colours, and a magnetic clasp. The Funky Chunkies brooches are based on children's drawings, presented in photo frames as a nod to how such drawings used to be preserved. Frunkies, funky friends in the form of necklaces, are inspired by broken but beloved cuddly toys from my childhood. Each collection approaches play and wonder differently. While Changeable Chunkies are all about combining and controlling, Funky Chunkies were developed during the making process, and Frunkies focus on the emotional connection with the worn and strange. During the process, I felt wonder, often in small moments such as unexpected combinations or mistakes that brought something valuable.


Marie Van Vyve 
Van constructie tot sieraad (From construction to jewellery) 
This collection emerged from a fascination with brutalist architecture and explores how the robust principles of this architectural style can be translated to the refined, personal scale of jewellery. What at first seems incompatible—the monumentality of architecture versus the intimacy of jewellery—turns out to share a surprising common ground. Both disciplines focus on design, construction and material experience. This research explores the dialogue and tension between these worlds. Through experimental material research, brutalist core values such as roughness, honesty in construction and visible texture are translated on a smaller scale. The process of making plays an active role in this: by embracing chance and imperfection, forms emerge that balance between object and jewel. The collection consists of wearable pieces that function as small architectural entities. Through the play of contrasts such as heavy and light, robust and refined, closed and open, a layered experience of the jewel emerges. Each jewel questions the boundary between body and structure, meaning and material, and invites reinterpretation of what a jewel can be.


Hanne Verellen
Serving GrandMa Energy
Serving GrandMa Energy explores personal identity through material, memory, and the rituals of everyday life. Sparked by a playful comment from my sister calling me a grandmother, the project became a way to reflect on and embrace the aesthetics, habits, and values that shape how I move through the world. Through materials such as ceramics, skin-toned stockings, and pearl necklaces, I draw from a visual language often associated with older women—not to imitate or idealise it, but to reinterpret it as part of my own story. These elements are reassembled into wearable pieces that shift between jewellery, accessories, and sculptural objects—items that feel both familiar and reimagined. Each piece is connected to a narrative: preparing for a stroll, shopping at the local market, dressing with intention. Rather than being nostalgic, the project speaks to presence—how we carry personal histories, how domestic objects become extensions of ourselves, and how style can serve as a form of self-knowing. Serving Grand Ma Energy is not about performing age or tradition, but about honouring the quiet power of care, slowness, and softness. It’s about creating objects that are worn, carried, and lived with—pieces that hold memory, express identity, and tell stories through their materials, forms, and functions.


Okke Wouters
Leave No Ruins Behind
Leave No Ruins Behind is a series of jewellery pieces made from seemingly contrasting materials: synthetic waste such as plastic, concrete remnants, and old iPod parts, combined with natural elements. These found objects are given a new life, becoming portals that delve deeper into moral questions surrounding consumption and pollution. Without words, they silently confront us, bearing traces of life and time, like quiet witnesses to our habits. Each piece symbolises the destructive side of human nature: what was once useful becomes waste. Yet they deserve our sympathy, as they reveal a painful truth about how we claim and abandon nature.