Instructor: Vivi Touloumidi
The workshop is tailored to the discipline of contemporary art jewelry and researches its creative methods. Together we will map diverse aspects of wearability and social coding of the body, as also investigate how concepts and cultural values materialize into jewelry formats. What role did metals play in maintaining these standards and how have artists worked against them or revalued their qualities? Furthermore, a series of illustrations will unveil how artists chose specific materials, either organic or industrial, to communicate their ideas and question hierarchies, but also reinvent traditional techniques in their making. Through short assignments and group discussions we will expand our skills in reading jewelry and understand how ideas manifest in form and matter. The aim of the workshop is to strengthen the bond between theory and practice, as also to support participants in identifying their position within the contemporary jewelry field.
Selected bibliography
- Oppi Untracht, “Jewelry Concepts and Technology”, London: Robert Hale Limited (1982).
- Liesbeth den Besten, “On Jewellery”, Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers (2011).
- W. Lindeman & FH Trier/ Idar-Oberstein, “Thinking Jewellery Schmuck Denken”,
Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers (2011) - Damian Skinner (ed.), “Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective”, New York: Lark (2013)
About Vivi Touloumidi
Vivi Touloumidi is an artist who was born and studied in Athens, before continuing her education on jewellery in Germany (BFA, University of Applied Arts Pforzheim) and Canada (exchange studies, NSCAD University). She holds an MFA from Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm (2013), awarded with the Karl-Alex Rosenqvists Grand. Since 2010, her work was exhibited in several curated gallery and museum exhibitions throughout Europe, the USA and China as well as the ITAMI Museum in Japan and the Hellenic Museum in Australia. Important fairs include SOFA Chicago (USA), COLLECT (UK), KunstRAI (NL), GRASSIMESSE (DE). In 2011, she was selected finalist at TALENTE and in 2017, for the Friedrich Becker Prize and the Herbert Hofmann Award at SCHMUCK in Munich. She is a contributing author for the Art Jewelry Forum and was co-teacher at the Summer Academy Salzburg in Austria in 2015.
