The names of the winners will be announced during the award gala of the 32nd International Jewellery Competition EMPATHY, at the Grand Opening on 11 May 2024 at 7 p.m. Post-competition exhibition will be presented in the frame of the Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER in the Gallery of Art in Legnica from 27.04. to 21.07.2024.

LIST OF QUALIFIED PARTICIPANTS

32nd International Jewellery Competition EMPATHY

1. Sharareh Aghaei – Iran / Germany
2. Yotam Bahat – The Netherlands
3. Alice Biolo – Italy
4. Jana Brevick – USA
5. Laurent Brune – France
6. Trinidad Contreras Chaparro – Spain
7. Susanne Elstner – Germany
8. Eva Fernandez Martos – Spain
9. Jacek Franasik – Poland
10. Enrike Groenewald – South Africa
11. Julia Groos – Germany
12. Paula Huizenga – The Netherlands
13. Aya Iwata – Japan
14. Małgorzata Kalińska – Poland
15. Nikita Kavryzhkin – Russia / Germany
16. Fanny Chelia Khirani – Hungary / Germany
17. Ji-Young Kim – Republic of Korea
18. Biljana Klekachkoska – The Republic of North Macedonia
19. Eszter Sára Kocsor – Hungary
20. Joshua Kosker – USA
21. Sergiusz Kuchczyński – Poland
22. Annelieke Landré – The Netherlands
23. Kristiina Laurits – Estonia
24. Jana Machatová – Slovakia
25. Tamara Marbl Joka – Norway
26. Toni Mayner – United Kingdom
27. Niyoushasadat Moosavi – Iran
28. Stephie Morawetz – Austria
29. Marta Norenberg – Poland
30. Julia Obermaier – Germany
31. Katarzyna Olejniczak – Poland
32. Sham Patwardhan-Joshi – Germany
33. Victor Pavlov – Bulgaria
34. Ruudt Peters – The Netherlands
35. Darja Popolitova – Estonia
36. Sarah Powell – United Kingdom
37. Helena Renner – Germany
38. Moniek Schrijer – New Zealand / The Netherlands
39. Kairi Sirendi – Estonia
40. Yookyung Song – Republic of Korea
41. Alix Spooren – Belgium
42. Yoko Takirai i Pietro Pellitteri – Japan / Italy
43. Ivana Tilešová – Slovakia

Jury of the Competition:

prof. Sławomir Fijałkowski – Professor of fine arts. Graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Łódź (Poland) – Jewellery Design. He has worked in many private and public academies, currently leading the Experimental Design Studio at the Faculty of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.

He deals with product and jewellery design in collaboration with recognized manufacturers and author’s design. Participant, organizer and curator of many jewellery and design exhibitions, author of texts, analysis, theoretical and scientific descriptions, as well as educational programs in the field of contemporary jewellery. A curator of the International Jewellery Competition and a general consultant of the Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER for over 20 years.

Mari Ishikawa – a graduate of the Nara University of Education in Japan (master's degree of art in 1986), diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 2001. Visiting Professor at the Kobe Design University in Japan. She participated in more than one hundred exhibitions (e.g. in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Sweden, USA). Winner of the Art Prize 2016 by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Munich), Inhorgenta Munich Award in the 22nd International Jewellery Competition REVOLT in 2013 (Legnica), 2nd Prize in the Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder’s Prize (Pittsburg, USA) and others. Her works have been included in several jewellery collections, among others: Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Germany, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Great Britain, MAD – The Museum of Arts and Design, New York City, USA.

Mari Ishikawa sees a parallel world through her everyday life and she translates them into jewelry. “We can‘t see anything unless we try. Discovery begins with the sense of sight”. Various elements from the natural world as a theme, her jewelry offers tactile sensations by touch which remind us of the physical presence of nature‘s ever-changing moments. Ishikawa lives in Munich, where she maintains her studio.

Charon Kransen – born in Holland, resided in New York City since 1988. He has worked in the field of contemporary jewelry since 1969. He received his training at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts in Jerusalem ((Israel), Hochschule fuer Gestaltung in Pforzheim (Germany) and at Juhls in Kautokeino (Norway). Professor of Jewelry and Enamel Design at the University of  Utrecht (Holland), Head of Jewelry and Enamel department at the Arts College Amersfoort (Holland), President of the VES (Dutch Jewelry Designers Organization) and lecturer at universities, colleges, and art organizations internationally.

Curator, art-dealer and agent for over 150 international contemporary jewelers (mostly non-Americans) in North-America at various galleries and art fairs such as the SOFA Chicago, SOFA NY, International Art + Design Fair in New York, Art Palm Beach Palm Beach, Miami International Art Fair Miami, SOFA West Santa Fe and Art Basel Miami, (Red Dot Fair) Art Aspen, Art & Jewelry & Antique Fair Palm Beach, LA Art Show etc.

He also distributes books and catalogs in the field of jewelry, metal, and design and his array of international titles are considered the most comprehensive in contemporary jewelry. He has been the official bookseller of the SNAG (Society of North American Goldsmiths) for the past 30 years, besides being a juror for many international contemporary jewelry competitions.

For the past 20 years he has lectured on contemporary jewelry and gives master-classes to students and professionals in the North-America, Europe, Australia and South America and Asia.

Michalina Owczarek-Siwak – graduate and now the director of the Jewellery Institute at the Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. She runs the Jewellery Design Basics Studio and the Manual Course, during which students learn to use alternative jewellery-making techniques.

In 2018, she obtained her doctoral degree. She has had many exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including the post-competition exhibition "Schmuck 2010" in Munich and the solo exhibition "Shell" in 2017 during Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER. She actively participates in numerous competitions, in which she was awarded (including the Prize in the Jewellery category during the Random Rapid Heartbeats International Competition, Amber Trip, 2019, the Hopea Company Prize in the 29th International Jewellery Competition STILL HUMAN?, Legnica, 2021). Her works can be found in galleries, museums and private collections, including the District Museum in Sandomierz, the Collection of Contemporary Polish Jewellery from the collection of Magda Magdalena Kwiatkiewicz and the International Collection of Contemporary Jewellery of the Gallery of Art in Legnica.

Doreen Timmers – graduated MA Art History, the owner of Galerie DOOR. She started working in a contemporary jewellery gallery in 2001, but also worked as a museum consultant, and did public relations and marketing for public art and cultural events. Doreen wanted to combine this knowledge and these skills in a gallery where the public can see jewelry and fine arts together, often combined by the storytelling they share and in which they, at times, overlap. Her goal is to reach and inspire as many people as possible with the beauty art creates.

Since its opening in 2017, Galerie DOOR has showcased international art jewellery by artists whose works invoke a sense of wonder through their craftsmanship, materials, and subject matter. „Art is a driving force in life. Art stimulates the senses, it feeds the mind and it is balm for the soul. Looking at art is a way of reflecting on one’s own life and modern society.” Galerie DOOR shows contemporary arts and jewellery of (inter)national artists and designers that excite. Some because of their directness, others through the original stories and yet others for the poetry and humor in the work. And all of them for their craftsmanship.

Galerie DOOR organizes exhibitions and events for artists to gain a broader audience, more publicity and the chance of finding a new ‘home’. They offer the audience a window to a different world, a new door that opens. Galerie DOOR regularly organises solo exhibitions and participates in internationally recognised professional fairs throughout Europe.

EMPATHY

Jewellery – an object belonging to the set of non-essential objects - if it appears in the field of vision, it inevitably absorbs attention, forces observation, interpretation, contemplation. It is selfish. Or at least it is often so.

Meanwhile, contemporary designers (of all kinds) constantly emphasise the need for sustainable design, the necessity to redirect attention to the understanding of user's needs, expectations and nostalgia, the perspective of user's experience, the criteria of indispensability, social and ecological responsibility.

These contradictory perspectives (historical and current) intersect quite rarely, but it is exactly in this common area that solutions are likely to emerge; solutions that we not only notice but also remember.

Jewellery – an object that sends a message difficult to miss – can also be, in a special way, a generator of dialogue, focus, attention, concentration, empathy.

Not an easy assumption in the age when superficial impulses, intense visual stimuli and stylistic excesses supported by increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms abound.

Feel welcome to creatively reflect on the function, essence and meaning of contemporary jewellery from the non-egoistic perspective of an artist who understands the needs of a demanding audience.

Prof. Sławomir Fijałkowski

Empathy is that unique sensitivity and openness to the world that underlies artistic creativity. It is the care that the artist, the creator, the designer directs towards their work, their creation, the object, the being that s/he brings to the world. It is also their forbearance towards the audience, defined as the world external to the object itself and the environment in which it will live its own life. It is, finally, the "readiness for", the trust and understanding that the viewer bestows on the author and their work.

Production, merchandise and shopping become personalised. This brings designer jewellery closer to the status of a work of art – a unique object-subject, a medium that, unlike the effects of mass production, is unique, one-of-a-kind in the whole world. Medium that is perceived by original and unique individuals, each of whom constitutes a unique combination of genes, neurons, cells, bacterial flora, chromosomes, hormones, personality traits and emotions, as well as ways of internalising the world – the result of individual experiences and circumstances.

Art without empathy is not art but production. A creator (or rather manufacturer) devoid of it is only an egoist or a madman. A non-empathic addressee will not become an open viewer. Each message and each reception will become a separate story, provided they exist in an empathetic universe.  

Do we understand jewellery? Do jewellery and its makers feel understood? What and on what topic would they like to tell us, how would they speak to us by giving us a work of art, a product, often a commodity? What would they like to tell us with their jewellery? What can we learn from it and about it?

Justyna Teodorczyk, PhD