Elisabeth Holder – From Jewellery to Contextual Art.

Goldschmiedhaus Hanau, 2024

The question of what jewellery is and what jewellery can be permeates Elisabeth Holder's work. Her exhibition—exploring Form, Symbol, Material, and Context—charts her trajectory from traditional jewellery-making into the realm of Contextual Art. She liberates jewellery from its thus far exclusive connection to the human body, thus expanding the concept of jewellery and revealing the different environments—architectural spaces, natural landscapes, and even discarded materials—that can serve as contexts for jewellery.

Deutsches Gold­schmiede­haus Hanau

Publication on the exhibition by Ruven Wiegert

Gestalterische Dialoge

Düsseldorf Stadtmuseum, together with the colleague Prof. Gabi Schillig 2016/2017

The dialogue approach method in design processes served as the topic for the students. For this purpose, they had the collections of the Düsseldorf Stadtmuseum at their disposal, from which they could choose an exhibit for their discussions and their creative works were shown in the context of the museum collection. Placed in a spatial, directly juxtaposed relationship to the original work in the museum, their work served to make the different levels of meaning of the designs visible and tangible.

Website: Gestalterische Dialoge

“A new dimension emerges in the interplay between with the material, the spaces, and the visitors …”
Susanne Anna

Schmuck als urbaner Prozess

Düsseldorf Stadtmuseum, together with the colleague Prof. Gabi Schillig, 2014/2015

Against the background of a generalised and expanded concept of jewellery, students worked in public space, leading to new designs related to urban space in the form of objects, actions, installations, and interventions. The adorning accents and the preceding design processes were prepared by the students for a special exhibition in the Düsseldorf Stadtmuseum. In so doing, they succeeded in making the great variety of design processes visible and the temporary works, with their non-repeatable moments, tangible.

Publication: Schmuck als urbaner Prozess
Context: City

Was ist Schmuck?

Presentation of research results by the author in the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, 2008

The exhibition “Was ist Schmuck?” (What is Jewellery?) was the result and summation of a research into the nature of what constitutes as jewellery and the conditions it must fulfil for it to be considered an adornment in contexts other than in the conventional sense of the jewellery piece adorning the wearer. Such forms of jewellery are designed for a particular context and remain bound to it. And though they can be documented photographically, they cannot be simply transferred. Thus, in addition to a documentation of the works developed for other locations, the presentation had to include works related to the exhibition site itself, to better highlight the reason why a context-specific artistic work must be called jewellery.

Blickfang (Eye Catcher)
Oase (Oases)