Zoe Kiner-Wolff. HEAR, Haute École des Arts du Rhin. New Talents Award Nominee 2022
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NewTalentsByKlimt02
Published: 01.12.2022

The 8th edition of the New Talents Award by Klimt02 aims to recognize the work of graduate students in our field by supporting their careers in the professional world. Nominated by our school members, one of the selected graduates will win the New Talents Award.
The stories fashion the bodies, the bodies accomplish the actions and the actions redefine the words.
Name of graduation student: Zoe Kiner-Wolff
Name of guiding teachers: Sophie Hanagarth and Florence Lehmann
Nominated by HEAR, Haute École des Arts du Rhin
Zoé Kiner-Wolff’s masks, jewellery and ornaments fascinate and take us off into her imaginary worlds with their half-animal, half-object chimeras. Her body accessories are a feature of her master’s thesis, written in the style of a fable skilfully incorporating different mythologies and cultures. These are the starting points of the story, the pretext and actual witnesses to this fiction to which she gave the title Les mondes Tégumentaires (Tegumentary Worlds).
The masks and jewellery take us off on Azazel’s journey of initiation, from learning about metalwork and becoming a goldsmith and metalworker, right up to her task of roaming the lands of the Tegument and Sub-tegument, the inner and outer layers of the human body on the scale of a continent, to collect stories in memory of the worlds.
During her degree course, Zoe drew the literary treasure out from her kimono sleeve and unfurled the long roll of stories from her phylactery.
Within a vast industrial decor, between earth and stormy sky, the characters of Medusa, Devil, Madame Butterfly, Sontga Margriata, Regulus and Versipellis come alive, perform and share their stories. And so the ornaments and jewellery, the masked faces and bodies adorned with wings, wolf or snakeskin embody the uniqueness of their identity. The stories fashion the bodies, the bodies accomplish the actions and the actions redefine the words.
/ Sophie Hanagarth and Florence Lehmann
The statement of the artist:
Mask, you mould the lines of a face, you wrap it, cover it and change its features. This second skin is overlaid on the first one, a veil of skin tissue made to dress it, hide it and reveal another surface.
Keratin adornment, it decorates head, neck, ankle, belly, face, arms or legs.
Small objects born of animal debris snuggled up on the palm of the hand. Metal skeletons covered with organic matter, from which grow hair, feathers, shell or scales.
On my jewels, the tegument – the very one that encloses the organism – redraws the border between human and animal, mixing lines and materials. Thus is born a hybrid being, humanimal, protagonist of a story written for him, which he carries on him, a story whose body is matter.
My master’s thesis – Les mondes Tégumentaires – is built as a collection that brings together the texts and tales I write for each of my characters, who come to life through my costumes, jewellery and masks. The thesis exists in two different forms: a book and a small metal box. Two containers of words from which I can extract each text, existing independently of the set. Because all my characters, embodied by a mask or jewel, are meant to be worn during a performance, during which I tell their story.
My thesis is a bit like Ursula le Guin’s carrier bag of which she said that “the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings.” (from Ursula le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986)
Contact:
Phone: +33 (0)6 32 07 38 33
Email: zo.kinerwolff@gmail.com
Instagram: @zo—kinerwolff
Find out more about HEAR, Haute École des Arts du Rhin
Name of guiding teachers: Sophie Hanagarth and Florence Lehmann
Nominated by HEAR, Haute École des Arts du Rhin
Zoé Kiner-Wolff’s masks, jewellery and ornaments fascinate and take us off into her imaginary worlds with their half-animal, half-object chimeras. Her body accessories are a feature of her master’s thesis, written in the style of a fable skilfully incorporating different mythologies and cultures. These are the starting points of the story, the pretext and actual witnesses to this fiction to which she gave the title Les mondes Tégumentaires (Tegumentary Worlds).
The masks and jewellery take us off on Azazel’s journey of initiation, from learning about metalwork and becoming a goldsmith and metalworker, right up to her task of roaming the lands of the Tegument and Sub-tegument, the inner and outer layers of the human body on the scale of a continent, to collect stories in memory of the worlds.
During her degree course, Zoe drew the literary treasure out from her kimono sleeve and unfurled the long roll of stories from her phylactery.
Within a vast industrial decor, between earth and stormy sky, the characters of Medusa, Devil, Madame Butterfly, Sontga Margriata, Regulus and Versipellis come alive, perform and share their stories. And so the ornaments and jewellery, the masked faces and bodies adorned with wings, wolf or snakeskin embody the uniqueness of their identity. The stories fashion the bodies, the bodies accomplish the actions and the actions redefine the words.
/ Sophie Hanagarth and Florence Lehmann
The statement of the artist:
Mask, you mould the lines of a face, you wrap it, cover it and change its features. This second skin is overlaid on the first one, a veil of skin tissue made to dress it, hide it and reveal another surface.
Keratin adornment, it decorates head, neck, ankle, belly, face, arms or legs.
Small objects born of animal debris snuggled up on the palm of the hand. Metal skeletons covered with organic matter, from which grow hair, feathers, shell or scales.
On my jewels, the tegument – the very one that encloses the organism – redraws the border between human and animal, mixing lines and materials. Thus is born a hybrid being, humanimal, protagonist of a story written for him, which he carries on him, a story whose body is matter.
My master’s thesis – Les mondes Tégumentaires – is built as a collection that brings together the texts and tales I write for each of my characters, who come to life through my costumes, jewellery and masks. The thesis exists in two different forms: a book and a small metal box. Two containers of words from which I can extract each text, existing independently of the set. Because all my characters, embodied by a mask or jewel, are meant to be worn during a performance, during which I tell their story.
My thesis is a bit like Ursula le Guin’s carrier bag of which she said that “the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings.” (from Ursula le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986)
Contact:
Phone: +33 (0)6 32 07 38 33
Email: zo.kinerwolff@gmail.com
Instagram: @zo—kinerwolff
Find out more about HEAR, Haute École des Arts du Rhin
Piece: Medusa, 2022
Snake leather, brass.
60 x 40 x 175 cm
Photo by: Manon Pourcher
Mask
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Piece: In the Devil’s Skin, 2022
Shagreen, copper.
25 x 8 x 30 cm
Mask
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Piece: Madama Butterfly, 2020
Butterfly wings, brass.
14 x 7 x 5.5 cm
Photo by: Bruno Thiévet
From series: Madama Butterfly
Face jewel
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Piece: Sontga Margriata, 2022
Brass, leather, peacock feathers, silver.
Photo by: Marie Lagabbe
Costume, Mask
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
Object: éclosion, 2020
Brass, eggshells.
9 x 5 x 13 cm
Boxes
© By the author. Read Klimt02.net Copyright.
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