I Thought I Might Develop into an Astronaut!
You don’t must fly into house to succeed in the celebrities. It occurs while you win the Herbert Hofmann Prize! It’s among the many most prestigious awards within the area of latest jewellery.
We interview the three winners of the Herbert Hofmann Prize 2024—Azin Soltani, Empar Juanes Sanchis, and Takayoshi Terajima—about their inventive approaches, sources of inspiration, and the works that have been awarded.
- They signify three totally different international locations and cultures, and three fully totally different approaches towards jewellery
- Azin Soltani (from Iran) re-creates in jewellery the pictures of properties from her homeland, all the way down to the final brick
- Empar Juanes Sanchis (Spain) left behind a profitable profession in structure to commit herself to jewellery making and creating musical-jewelry performances
- Takayoshi Terajima (Japan) discovered inspiration within the constraints of the pandemic and combines AI and Japanese conventional crafts
Azin Soltani’s Jewellery Resembles Conventional Iranian Homes
Elena Karpilova: Inform us about your background.
Azin Soltani: I studied industrial administration each for my bachelor’s diploma in Iran and my grasp’s diploma from a consortium of three universities (Politecnica de Madrid, in Spain; Politecnico di Milano, Italy; and KTH, Sweden). I additionally tried to review physics for my second bachelor’s diploma, in South Korea. I believed I might turn into an astronaut!
My jewelry-related story began in 2010 in a small silver store behind the college in Seoul. At some point I entered and easily requested if additionally they taught the right way to make jewellery, and that was it. For about two to 3 months, I attended courses there. And right here I’m, a goldsmith, lapidarist, and trying-to-be-an artist.
Inform us about your work.
Azin Soltani: The thought behind the works titled Inside and Outdoors comes from the standard structure of Iranian homes. They’re made from brick tessellations on the outside, and plaster, layers and layers of it, on the inside. The partitions have murals, mirrors, and different delicate particulars on them. You see the handmade plaster and mirror decorations inside the homes in case you are invited and allowed to go inside.
It’s all engaging, all sturdy and weather-resistant for a whole bunch of years. However they are going to ultimately fall into wreck or a minimum of partial disrepair irrespective of how exhausting you attempt to keep away from it. For me, homes are people. What occurs in these homes is residing. As nothing can stay intact within the claws of time, ultimately comes wreck, which is dying.
The “partitions” of my items have been made precisely the way in which employees construct them. I received the tiny bricks from a personal provider. It produces them for college kids who research conventional structure in Iran, to make maquettes of previous and historic buildings or for his or her apply. Typically I broke them and modified their sizes to make my very own items. Historic Iranian stucco and mirrorwork (Ayeneh-kari) have been utilized to brighten the inner components. I’ve principally employed strategies, strategies, and patterns practiced about 500 years in the past within the Safavid dynasty.
Who evokes you? To whom are you grateful?
Azin Soltani: Whoever I’m, no matter I’ve achieved, is touched by the presence of my household and their unconditional help. They by no means received disillusioned with me. At any time when I received bored with persevering with, they stayed with me and pushed me ahead.
Empar Juanes Sanchis’s Jewellery Follow Impressed a Musical Efficiency
Inform us slightly about your self.
Empar Juanes Sanchis: I come from a humble household in a city of 1,300 inhabitants close to Valencia, Spain. Artwork isn’t a precedence there. My father painted as a interest. He was the one who first launched me to artwork, after I was a baby. Nonetheless, for my entire household, duty and constructing a worthwhile profession with a steady earnings are a very powerful issues. I in all probability selected structure as a result of it was considerably anticipated of me.
I accomplished my architectural diploma between Valencia, Aachen, and Beijing. I felt revered and had a job many colleagues from college would dream of, however I at all times knew I wanted one thing extra. I felt the necessity to work with my palms and sought extra inventive freedom. I regarded into totally different choices at artwork universities. Maastricht was good. I instantly fell in love with the areas and workshops it supplied.
Finding out structure has helped me not solely formally, with a extremely developed spatial and volumetric imaginative and prescient, but in addition in my capability for work and perseverance, that are crucial in a profession as demanding as structure. Typically when working with agate I needed to open many uncooked stones to search out one which had sufficient measurement, uniformity, absence of veins, inclusions, or fractures to work with in three dimensions. I wanted to have the ability to minimize it thinly and exactly, all the way down to the millimeter, with out breaking it.
The stone is a really particular materials for me, however it’s only a medium. What’s necessary is expressing my inside world. Other than jewellery, I play cello. I’m interested by images. Final yr, through the Melting Level occasion, organized by EASD in Valencia, I conceptually accompanied my items with images and a sound efficiency. I improvised with my good friend Amadeo Moscardó across the idea of pressure, utilizing synthesizers and my cello, linked to pedals, amplifiers, and a stone-cutting noticed. We divided the efficiency into three components, associated to 3 of my items. Considered one of them was the brooch Don’t Dare, which gained the Herbert Hofmann Prize.
Inform us about your jewellery.
Empar Juanes Sanchis: Don’t Dare arises from three parallel research. One is formal, finding out the geometry of the circle. One other is materials, continually pushing the boundaries of stone. The final is emotional, reflecting on private house and our fragility as human beings. Ideas akin to power and safety are merged with fragility and vulnerability. By finding out the theme of our private house and initiating a robust, direct, wordless dialogue between the wearer and the observer, Don’t Dare is a tribute to each fragility and life.
I prefer to query the boundaries between jewellery and object. I’m very skeptical of the necessity for “wearability” inside jewellery. I actually imagine that up to date jewellery goes far past that. It’s a pity that in sure competitions you’ll be able to solely take part with wearable items. Some galleries affiliate salability with the benefit of carrying a bit, and worth that over its creative advantage. I hope curators, gallery house owners, and collectors turn into extra open on this matter.
What evokes you?
Empar Juanes Sanchis: I’m principally impressed by intimacy. Philip Sajet advised me, “It’s important to hold believing this nonsense you do is a very powerful, and this takes an infinite quantity of power.” The phrases “this nonsense you do” caught with me. In any case, what’s up to date jewellery (and don’t get me improper right here) if not super “nonsense”? And what’s my jewellery throughout the jewellery world—in stone that diverges from commerciality, typically even claiming fragility—if not a fair larger “nonsense”? It’s a press release that helps me stand firmly in my place and duty as an artist. It retains me believing that creating, inspiring, and shifting different individuals’s souls is, certainly, a very powerful factor.
Takayoshi Terajima Engraves AI-Generated Portraits
Inform us about your jewellery.
Takayoshi Terajima: My AI undertaking began across the time the Corona pandemic started. When the necessity for jewellery started to be questioned, I used to be intrigued by the knowledge on the screens of Zoom conferences. This data was an individual’s private belongings, akin to bookshelves, houseplants, curtains, posters, and so forth. Every little thing on the display, including the particular person’s picture, is processed as the identical two-dimensional picture.
Due to this fact, I think about the display as an prolonged house of the physique, and I started to create two-dimensional works as jewellery to be “worn” on the display. The primary works have been easy metallic works, however with a purpose to improve the affinity with the digital house, I modified the manufacturing course of by changing the metallic into information after which outputting it once more as a cloth.
The pandemic got here to an finish. This meant a recursion from digital house to actual house. I started to think about jewellery that may very well be worn on the human physique once more. On the similar time, I started to video name extra often with my household in Japan. This gave me extra time to mirror on my roots. My household has lived on the identical land and grown rice for about 300 years. Since I’ve solely Japanese citizenship, I’ve to use for a visa [to live] in Germany. I’ve to submit many paperwork yearly. I spotted that this character data is my id on this land. So I used to be interested by what would occur if I let AI draw my portrait utilizing this textual data.
I put in AI not solely my identify and birthday, but in addition my household construction, faith, nationality, and way more data. It’s taboo to enter private data into AI. And I could also be an fool for repeating it daily. However as an artist, I couldn’t resist the urge to say, “I actually need to use this data!” So I’ve no regrets.
The engraving approach I exploit, like rice cultivation, is an excellent conventional course of with a protracted historical past. By combining the newest know-how with conventional craftsmanship, I’ve succeeded in creating an enchanting impact on the floor of the piece. And this impact is maximized when worn. Because the wearer strikes, the sunshine displays off the floor of the piece, inflicting varied adjustments to look.
Engraving is finished with a chisel created from a carbon metal rod and a small hammer. The Japanese fashion is to engrave grooves by pointing the chisel towards oneself. For the reason that thickness of the plate is just 0.3 mm, I made my very own chisel by trial and error to discover a form that’s large sufficient with out being too deep. In Japanese conventional craft, it is not uncommon to change instruments by oneself. I’ve made greater than 100 chisels to date. I’m at all times aware of a certain quantity of pressure and the angle, and engrave in a method that my physique learns, similar to coaching for sports activities. I’ve been taking part in volleyball for greater than 20 years, so engraving and volleyball coaching are linked in my thoughts.
Who’re you grateful for?
Takayoshi Terajima: There are such a lot of individuals I want to thank. It’s troublesome for me to decide on only one. If I needed to deal with one particular person, it might be my spouse. She is a ceramic artist. We’ve got been collectively since we have been college college students in Tokyo, so she has watched my struggles for nearly 15 years. We frequently discuss our art work. We’re lucky to have individuals close by with whom we will focus on issues in depth.[1]
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[1] Takayoshi’s solutions, like all of the textual content on this article, have been edited previous to publication. Among the many adjustments, Takayoshi’s remaining paragraph was deleted. It mentioned, “Lastly, this textual content was translated utilizing Google Translate, DeepL, and Chat GPT. So please forgive me if the sentences are unnatural. That is what I and AI are able to at current. I want to categorical my hope and appreciation for the longer term improvement of know-how.” Elena Karpilova, the creator of this text, finds it noteworthy that Takayoshi doesn’t conceal these AI instruments that all of us use, usually masking our personal lack of expertise. Karpilova argues Takayoshi is expressing that he doesn’t know the whole lot, can’t know the whole lot. “Takayoshi takes AI as a co-author for the interview, respecting the mental property rights of AI,” says Karpilova, “and mentions it not as a ‘crutch’ however as a full-fledged companion in creating the textual content. He makes use of the identical strategy in jewelry-making, paying tribute to trendy applied sciences.”
