Nora Reitelshöfer

Bio

Nora Reitelshöfer (b. 1993 in Fürth, Germany) is a jewellery artist based in Munich. Trained as a goldsmith, she studied Fine Arts in the Jewellery and Hollowware class of Professor Karen Pontoppidan at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, graduating in 2026. Her artistic practice moves between jewellery, sculpture and objects, exploring the relationship between the body, material, function and dysfunction. Through transformations of familiar forms and materials, she creates objects that oscillate between familiarity and estrangement. She has been a scholarship holder of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) since 2020.

Statement

My artistic practice moves between jewellery, sculpture, and objects. Drawing on my background in goldsmithing, I combine traditional craftsmanship with a conceptual and experimental approach to materials.

I often begin with familiar, everyday forms and materials, transforming their seemingly fixed characteristics through shifts in scale, materiality, and function. I am interested in the moment when something familiar becomes strange, when objects lose their clearly defined purpose and begin to oscillate between functionality and dysfunction, attraction and discomfort.

Through my work, I explore how our perception of objects is shaped by learned ideas of material, function, safety, and the body. Using materials such as latex, silicone, porcelain, and graphite, I question established conventions and challenge the boundaries between jewellery and sculpture. I understand jewellery as a transformation of existing forms into objects that enter into a relationship with the body, whether through physical contact, their potential to be worn, or their sculptural presence.

Central to my practice are questions of intimacy, distance, vulnerability, and power. I am particularly interested in emotional states that often remain invisible within social structures. Through subtle interventions and radical transformations, I create objects that resist clear categorisation, inviting both familiarity and unease. My work explores the relationship between people and objects, questioning established notions of identity, bodily experience, and the expectations we attach to the things that surround us.

CV