Part of
New Talents Award
2025
New Talents Award
2025
Trier University of Applied Sciences, Campus Idar-Oberstein. MFA Degree Show 2025
Published: 06.11.2025
Pendant: Light 1. Weapon, 2025
Quartz crystal, ebony wood, fabric
8 x 3 x 4.5 cm
Serial number: 02/25
Photo by: Cornelia Wruck
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Estimated price: 3072 €
At Trier University of Applied Sciences, Campus Idar-Oberstein, students of the Gemstones and Jewellery programs explore their own topics, materials, and narratives. The focus lies on developing an individual artistic position and a unique language within the medium of jewellery and gemstone, where gemstone often takes a central role – as a medium of expression, a carrier of memory, a raw material, and a concept at the same time. The program combines critical thinking with technical precision and experimental research, leading to works that range between socially and politically engaged reflections to poetic or material-based investigations. In 2025 we present the graduation works of 10 MFA students.
Artist list
Rezvan Haijan Hossein Abadi, Chun Chang, Xi Chen, Arianaz Dehghan, Poras Dhakan, Sara Heidary, Niyoushasadat Moosavi, Chidimma Omeke, Kim O’Brien, Grit-Ute Zille
Guiding teachers: Theo Smeets, Eva-Maria Kollischan, Ute Eitzenhöfer, Julia Wild, Levan Jishkariani, Typhaine Le Monnier
Chun Chang
Supervisors: Prof. Ute Eitzenhöfer, Typhaine Le Monnier
Jewellery is to contemplate the most banal thing and to find the spark in it. It is the poetry buried in hardware store, gas station, supermarket, forest, theme park, dressing room, airport lounge, by the river, in the shower, in the smell of fresh laundry, in the books when I read, on the street when I walk, in the sky when I smoke.
Jewellery is philosophical-metaphysical, economical-paradoxical, allegorical-hysterical, critical and comical.
Xi Chen
Superviors: Theo Smeets, Julia Wild
In traditional Chinese culture, plants like bamboo, pine, and cypress are often used as symbols of noble character. Growing up in such an environment helped me notice the uniqueness of something as ordinary as a leaf. Making leaves out of stone symbolize the quiet presence that surrounds us. This series, “You cannot put the wind into a bag,” reflects how some things—like the wind or stone—cannot be controlled. Each carved leaf is unique, with a surprising sketch on the back, echoing the irreplaceable moments and memories we often overlook.
Arianaz Dehghan
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
Step into a space where breaking becomes creation and fractures reveal transformation. In my work, personal breakage is not an end but a beginning, a source of strength, beauty, and becoming a new. Inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow and the journey of self-individuation, I turn toward the hidden, wounded, and often rejected parts of the self. My pieces become a medium for this inward journey. Fractured stones and strands of woven hair serve as metaphors for resilience, memory, and healing. Hair, though delicate, is incredibly strong, a symbol of the paradox between vulnerability and strength. Woven through broken stones, it becomes a thread of continuity, like DNA, binding stories, traumas, and identities together. Each knot and connection tells a story, not just of mending but of becoming. My jewellery speaks to moments of fragility and quiet transformation, inviting the wearer to see brokenness not as an end but as a beginning. In putting ourselves back together, we do not return to what we were; we carry the beauty of fracture and emerge as something new.
Website: www.arianazdehghan.de
Poras Dhakan
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Julia Wild
This work investigates how museums continue to shape narratives about India through the display of artefacts acquired during the era of various nations’ imperial conquest. Trophies taken by the British after the killing of Tipu Sultan in India 1799 still sit in glass cases in museums in the UK, seemingly celebrating Britain’s exploitive and tyrannical conquest of India.
The work is a call to action to its viewers and wearers to urge museums to give back looted artefacts. Until this can happen, it asks museums and collections to put behind the strategy of glorifying Britain’s conquest of India and to stop presenting prejudicial views of India.
Website: www.bakedwithlight.com
Rezvan Haijan Hossein Abadi
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Ute Eitzenhöfer
Ripple is a necklace made of silver wire, gradually thinned step by step using a drawplate, some parts remain thick, others extremely fine reminiscent of old metal vases with narrow necks and wide bodies, yet unlike them, the wires of this piece move freely, spiraling around each other in their own direction, I followed the natural tension of the metal rather than forcing it, the work rests lightly on the body, moving with it in every gesture, Its core idea is freedom a sense of suspension, flow, and being in motion rather than fixed form.
Sara Heidary
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
I use fabric as a primary medium to question societal norms and explore identity, equality, and freedom. Fabric often tied to modesty, control, and the mandated hijab , has been used to silence women and erase individuality. By transforming it into contemporary jewelry, I reclaim it as a symbol of empowerment and self-expression.
One piece features a small bell, its single sound breaking silence long imposed on women. My work honors resilience and strength, offering jewelry not as ornament but as narrative, resistance, remembrance, and a call to reimagine personal and collective freedom.
Website: https://www.sara-art-jewellery.com
Niyoushasadat Moosavi
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
I see jewelry as a transitional object can carry personal meaning, embody emotional and psychological connections. Jewelry can serve as a medium for critical thinking and raises awareness about social, political, and mental health issues, such as psychosomatic disorders that many silently endure. Some years ago, parts of my body would swell without any reason. I visited many doctors, but none could not determine the cause. The symptoms disappeared after we moved to a new apartment and I quit my job. Understanding these experiences, I want to raise awareness about issues that many of us face.
My pieces are created from bio-based materials out of respect for our environment. Using a selfdeveloped method, I generate textures that evoke tension and unease, expressing the stress that underlies psychosomatic conditions explored in this collection.
My aim is simple: if one person feels seen, heard, supported or think, talk and start dialogue through these objects, then the work has done its job.
Website: www.niyoushamoosavi.com
Kim O’Brien
Supervisors: Theo Smeet and Typhaine Monnier
My work is a reflection on living in an age where the digital and physical worlds increasingly blur. As technology advances and online culture grows ever more pervasive, I have become fascinated by how this shift affects our sense of intimacy and connection—particularly through the notion of touch starvation. My work explores touch as a means of remembrance, considering how objects hold memory, sentiment, and presence in a time where physical closeness is often replaced by virtual interaction. Through this, I reflect on how we hold onto others—and ourselves—through the tactile and emotional traces embedded in the things are nostalgic.
Chidimma Omeke
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Typhaine Le Monnier
Mask is more than an object; it is a symbol of an immaterial identity, existing beyond the physical. This identity marks both the beginning and conclusion of a continuous transformational process, unfolding through a cyclical progression: Immaterial Mask (Identity) → Medium → Representational Mask → Embodiment & Modification → Facial Mask → Response → Immaterial Mask (Identity). This thesis explores this cycle as a conceptual framework for understanding the sustainable transformation of masks, where identity is not static but fluid and ever-evolving. It redefines jewelry as an extension of the mask, exploring wearable art and its transformative impact as representational masks.
Conventional definitions of adornment are challenged, positioning both masks and jewelry as tools for mediating identity transformation and self-expression. By considering jewelry as a wearable mask, this thesis explores how adornment can serve as a bridge between the physical and the immaterial, allowing the wearer to exist in a continuous state of metamorphosis. In a contemporary world constrained by time, space, and rigid social structures, jewelry, like the mask, allows its wearer the ability to defy these boundaries and better express unique identities.
Grit-Ute Zille
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
Wool, silk - delicate, soft, fragile materials. It is fascinating to shape them into solid and structured forms that can stand effortlessly next to stones.
My works reflect life, feelings, fears, injuries and the strength, warmth and joy that come from them. They are the result of a long process: I search and find and process what I encounter: Materials, moods, silence, conversations. Searching and finding become part of the jewellery.
My jewellery is colourful and strong, and that is exactly what I want to give people with it: joy, encouragement, fun, uniqueness. Each piece of jewellery will find the right wearer.
Website: www.gritutezille.de/en
Chun Chang
Supervisors: Prof. Ute Eitzenhöfer, Typhaine Le Monnier
Jewellery is to contemplate the most banal thing and to find the spark in it. It is the poetry buried in hardware store, gas station, supermarket, forest, theme park, dressing room, airport lounge, by the river, in the shower, in the smell of fresh laundry, in the books when I read, on the street when I walk, in the sky when I smoke.
Jewellery is philosophical-metaphysical, economical-paradoxical, allegorical-hysterical, critical and comical.
Xi Chen
Superviors: Theo Smeets, Julia Wild
In traditional Chinese culture, plants like bamboo, pine, and cypress are often used as symbols of noble character. Growing up in such an environment helped me notice the uniqueness of something as ordinary as a leaf. Making leaves out of stone symbolize the quiet presence that surrounds us. This series, “You cannot put the wind into a bag,” reflects how some things—like the wind or stone—cannot be controlled. Each carved leaf is unique, with a surprising sketch on the back, echoing the irreplaceable moments and memories we often overlook.
Arianaz Dehghan
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
Step into a space where breaking becomes creation and fractures reveal transformation. In my work, personal breakage is not an end but a beginning, a source of strength, beauty, and becoming a new. Inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow and the journey of self-individuation, I turn toward the hidden, wounded, and often rejected parts of the self. My pieces become a medium for this inward journey. Fractured stones and strands of woven hair serve as metaphors for resilience, memory, and healing. Hair, though delicate, is incredibly strong, a symbol of the paradox between vulnerability and strength. Woven through broken stones, it becomes a thread of continuity, like DNA, binding stories, traumas, and identities together. Each knot and connection tells a story, not just of mending but of becoming. My jewellery speaks to moments of fragility and quiet transformation, inviting the wearer to see brokenness not as an end but as a beginning. In putting ourselves back together, we do not return to what we were; we carry the beauty of fracture and emerge as something new.
Website: www.arianazdehghan.de
Poras Dhakan
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Julia Wild
This work investigates how museums continue to shape narratives about India through the display of artefacts acquired during the era of various nations’ imperial conquest. Trophies taken by the British after the killing of Tipu Sultan in India 1799 still sit in glass cases in museums in the UK, seemingly celebrating Britain’s exploitive and tyrannical conquest of India.
The work is a call to action to its viewers and wearers to urge museums to give back looted artefacts. Until this can happen, it asks museums and collections to put behind the strategy of glorifying Britain’s conquest of India and to stop presenting prejudicial views of India.
Website: www.bakedwithlight.com
Rezvan Haijan Hossein Abadi
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Ute Eitzenhöfer
Ripple is a necklace made of silver wire, gradually thinned step by step using a drawplate, some parts remain thick, others extremely fine reminiscent of old metal vases with narrow necks and wide bodies, yet unlike them, the wires of this piece move freely, spiraling around each other in their own direction, I followed the natural tension of the metal rather than forcing it, the work rests lightly on the body, moving with it in every gesture, Its core idea is freedom a sense of suspension, flow, and being in motion rather than fixed form.
Sara Heidary
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
I use fabric as a primary medium to question societal norms and explore identity, equality, and freedom. Fabric often tied to modesty, control, and the mandated hijab , has been used to silence women and erase individuality. By transforming it into contemporary jewelry, I reclaim it as a symbol of empowerment and self-expression.
One piece features a small bell, its single sound breaking silence long imposed on women. My work honors resilience and strength, offering jewelry not as ornament but as narrative, resistance, remembrance, and a call to reimagine personal and collective freedom.
Website: https://www.sara-art-jewellery.com
Niyoushasadat Moosavi
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
I see jewelry as a transitional object can carry personal meaning, embody emotional and psychological connections. Jewelry can serve as a medium for critical thinking and raises awareness about social, political, and mental health issues, such as psychosomatic disorders that many silently endure. Some years ago, parts of my body would swell without any reason. I visited many doctors, but none could not determine the cause. The symptoms disappeared after we moved to a new apartment and I quit my job. Understanding these experiences, I want to raise awareness about issues that many of us face.
My pieces are created from bio-based materials out of respect for our environment. Using a selfdeveloped method, I generate textures that evoke tension and unease, expressing the stress that underlies psychosomatic conditions explored in this collection.
My aim is simple: if one person feels seen, heard, supported or think, talk and start dialogue through these objects, then the work has done its job.
Website: www.niyoushamoosavi.com
Kim O’Brien
Supervisors: Theo Smeet and Typhaine Monnier
My work is a reflection on living in an age where the digital and physical worlds increasingly blur. As technology advances and online culture grows ever more pervasive, I have become fascinated by how this shift affects our sense of intimacy and connection—particularly through the notion of touch starvation. My work explores touch as a means of remembrance, considering how objects hold memory, sentiment, and presence in a time where physical closeness is often replaced by virtual interaction. Through this, I reflect on how we hold onto others—and ourselves—through the tactile and emotional traces embedded in the things are nostalgic.
Chidimma Omeke
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Typhaine Le Monnier
Mask is more than an object; it is a symbol of an immaterial identity, existing beyond the physical. This identity marks both the beginning and conclusion of a continuous transformational process, unfolding through a cyclical progression: Immaterial Mask (Identity) → Medium → Representational Mask → Embodiment & Modification → Facial Mask → Response → Immaterial Mask (Identity). This thesis explores this cycle as a conceptual framework for understanding the sustainable transformation of masks, where identity is not static but fluid and ever-evolving. It redefines jewelry as an extension of the mask, exploring wearable art and its transformative impact as representational masks.
Conventional definitions of adornment are challenged, positioning both masks and jewelry as tools for mediating identity transformation and self-expression. By considering jewelry as a wearable mask, this thesis explores how adornment can serve as a bridge between the physical and the immaterial, allowing the wearer to exist in a continuous state of metamorphosis. In a contemporary world constrained by time, space, and rigid social structures, jewelry, like the mask, allows its wearer the ability to defy these boundaries and better express unique identities.
Grit-Ute Zille
Supervisors: Theo Smeets, Levan Jishkariani
Wool, silk - delicate, soft, fragile materials. It is fascinating to shape them into solid and structured forms that can stand effortlessly next to stones.
My works reflect life, feelings, fears, injuries and the strength, warmth and joy that come from them. They are the result of a long process: I search and find and process what I encounter: Materials, moods, silence, conversations. Searching and finding become part of the jewellery.
My jewellery is colourful and strong, and that is exactly what I want to give people with it: joy, encouragement, fun, uniqueness. Each piece of jewellery will find the right wearer.
Website: www.gritutezille.de/en
News!
Part of
New Talents Award
2025
New Talents Award
2025
Hochschule Trier
- Mail:
- es.sekretariat
hochschule-trier.de
- Management:
- Theo Smeets
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Cash
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From Louise Bourgeois to Yoko Ono. Jewellery by Female Artists
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We paused before a House that seemed. A Swelling of the Ground at Obsessed! Festival
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Beware of BEWAREN
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Who Brings What to the Table
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Claire Lavendhomme, Jewellery Artist
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Galerie AK2
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FullHouse
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The WearHouse
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Metamorphosis
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The Pool
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Upstairs
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Piraeus building
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