Nexit. PXL-MAD School of Arts. BA Degree Show 2026

Artist list

Marie Festraets, Tosca Ipers, Kayra Rommen, Maud Scheers, Rune Vervoort

During the second semester of the 2025-2026 academic year, the students from the Jewellery Design, Gold- and Silversmithing department at PXL-MAD School of Arts, Hasselt, dedicated their efforts to developing unique projects.

Marie Festraets transformed pills into a new material for a series of wearable and ephemeral jewellery pieces. Her work places illness in a different context and explores how jewellery can help the wearer regain control over their own story.

Rune Vervoort worked with feathers, among other materials, transforming them into jewellery in which patterns, repetition and subtle differences take centre stage. Her work invites the viewer to slow down and pay attention to the small, precious details in which unexpected patterns of beauty emerge.

Tosca Ipers created a modular jewellery collection from parts of old musical instruments. Through repetitive actions by the wearer, the jewellery is activated, inviting attention, tranquillity and a tactile experience.

Maud Scheers created portraits and jewellery using human hair, a material that is at once intimate, personal and everyday. Her work pays tribute to the donors and reveals the beauty, connection and trust hidden within human residual materials.

Kayra Rommen combined graphic design and jewellery design to create a personal visual language between two-dimensionality and spatiality. By reducing and stylising forms and rendering them in black, her work explores the transition from her graphic design background to her development as a jewellery designer.

Guiding teachers: Frederik Aerts, Patrick Ceyssens, David Huycke, Maria Konschake, Audi Pauwels, Nadia Sels, Anneleen Swillen, Johanna (Hanneke) Van Hage, Ellen Vrijsen, Karen Wuytens


Maud Scheers, Een eerbetoon aan haar, 2026

Een eerbetoon aan haar is an ode to human hair and to everyone who entrusted me with a piece of their personal DNA. This project places the beauty of human residual materials at its core, materials that often evoke feelings of disgust. Through this work, I aim to reveal the intimacy, beauty, and sense of connection hidden within them.

An essential part of my process is the transition from an individual act of collecting to a social process of donation. The exchange of these materials creates encounters and fosters stronger bonds between people. Inspired by the anecdotes surrounding these donations, I began to work visually. In doing so, I discovered the versatility of hair: at once intimate and deeply personal, yet also everyday and accessible.

I also became drawn to the hair of strangers; for me, there is something profoundly mysterious about it, and the act of creating with such a personal material embodies a great deal of trust. The portraits and jewellery that have emerged from these connections thus become a literal tribute to both the hair and its donor.


Marie Festraets, In Capsulevorm, 2026

How can jewellery design, by transforming medical material, contribute to the personal and societal handling of illness?
This project did not begin with a research question, but with a childhood drawing: a pill entering the body through a ring, making everything better again. Drawn during a period when my mother was seriously ill.

Illness carries a label, and that label is never neutral. It shapes how others look at you, how the wearer sees herself, and how much room is left for identity. Medical objects reinforce this: their clinical shapes and colours act as unwanted signals of vulnerability. My question was not how to soften those signals, but how to rethink the material itself.
By treating pill capsules with warm water, a new raw material emerged: recognisable in origin, unrecognisable in form. The test pieces began, unintentionally, to resemble gastronomic dishes. That shift from medicine to dish brings questions about consumption, luxury and access to care to the surface, in line with how Damien Hirst presents pills as tempting objects in his Cure series.

This research resulted in four pieces. HelloHealth is an edible plate-jewel: pendant, display and dissolvable object in one. Bevestigd (Attached) leaves a stain behind when the jewel dissolves: a trace that remains, the way illness leaves traces behind after treatment is over. Moge het helpen (May it help) is a rosary made of blood pressure pills: just like the rosary prayer, taking daily medication works through repetition, discipline and trust in something greater than yourself. The cross has been replaced by an opaque pill blister. Inside it sits a pill that makes everything better again. How exactly is left open to interpretation. Dat het helpt (That it helps) makes that ritual personal and practically usable: here, the beads are adjustable, using the functionality of pill capsules. This allows the necklace to adapt itself to whoever wears it.

This work offers no answer, but shifts a gaze: from what do you have? to what are you wearing? A piece of jewellery can give the wearer back control over her own story, not by hiding illness, but by giving it a different context.


Rune Vervoort, rustruimte, 2026

This project explores how patterns reveal my way of thinking as a designer. An inner creative block led me to search for a way of working that creates space for intuition, experimentation, and acceptance.
By transforming feathers and making repetitive incisions in leather, I developed a visual language centered on repetition and variation. The subtle differences within these patterns give the work its character and reflect my ongoing exploration of imperfection and the unpredictable.

At the heart of this project is the idea of an in-between space: a mental place where the critical voice fades into the background, making room for experimentation, failure, and growth. Drawing on my interest in fashion, photography, and the craftsmanship of haute couture, I envision this visual language coming to life in front of the camera, on the runway, or in an editorial setting.
Through this work, I invite the viewer to slow down and pay attention to the small details that surround us. It is often there that unexpected patterns of beauty reveal themselves.


Tosca Ipers, ACTOS, 2026 

The jewellery in the ACTOS collection is not only worn, but also activated by the wearer’s actions. The title refers to the Latin word ‘actus’, which derives from the verb ‘agere’: to do, to act, to set in motion. Based on research into ‘phasing’ amongst artists from various disciplines, a modular collection emerged in which movement, repetition, material and experience converge.

Parts of old musical instruments were dismantled, treated, restored and reworked into wearable jewellery, giving the materials a new lease of life. Hammers, valves, strings, screws, wood, felt and mother-of-pearl no longer form a playable instrument, but a piece of jewellery that responds to an action. By turning, sliding, unfolding and folding, a transition is created each time: a state before, during and after the action.

The ACTOS collection explores how a piece of jewellery can evoke attention, tranquillity and a sense of familiarity through the addition of a repetitive action by the wearer. The jewellery becomes a small ritual: an action that slows the wearer down, helps them focus and momentarily isolates them from the hustle and bustle around them. This allows the wearer to concentrate on a subtle movement, a soft sound or a tactile experience.

The jewellery pieces do not have a fixed end result. Each time, an action by the wearer is required to bring about a different form, movement or experience. Some pieces are large and striking, others subtle and understated.
The ACTOS collection invites you to take action, to slow down and to experience tranquillity.


Kayra Rommen, Black on White, 2026

As a designer with a graphic and typographic background within a Jewelry design, Gold & Silversmithing education, it has always been a personal challenge to think and design spatially. Often, the starting point of my process is two-dimensional, which is later developed into a three-dimensional design.

During my bachelor's research, I wanted to transform these formal restrictions into a strength. By combining these two worlds of jewelry and graphic design, I aim to find my own visual language that never completely detaches itself from two-dimensionality.

The premise of my work is based on the themes of life and death as a guideline for my visual language and self-reflection. These are not used in their literal meaning within semiotics, but as a method of translation to better understand and shape my visual language. Within my formal translation, death represents my history within graphic design and two-dimensionality. The concept of life refers to spatiality and my current development within jewelry design.

As a designer, I position myself between the two fields of jewelry and graphic design. This is visualized through reduction and stylization. A nod to the reduction of the two-dimensionality, clarity, and legibility of graphic design, and the conceptualization, wearability, and three-dimensionality of jewelry design. The use of black further reinforces this reduction and stylization by allowing forms to grasp their essence. This essence creates formal recognizability and legibility of the final work and simulates an experience between flatness and spatiality.