Jewellery and Corpus: Ädellab

At the bachelor’s programme Jewellery and Corpus: Ädellab, students and teachers engage in ongoing conversations on what jewellery and corpus are or could be, only to understand how definitions are inadequate: at best, they last until the next idea, project or discussion brings along doubts and uncertainty and, therefore, novel pathways and possibilities. It is perhaps in the nature of jewellery and corpus to be flickering, even tricky subjects – we think we know what they are, and where their boundaries lie, until they confuse us, altering our expectations of them. Staying close to the making, shifting the focus from what jewellery and corpus are to what they rather do or could do, exploring the intimate relations between language and materiality, are some of the ways in which the students feed their curiosity and explorations.

In the degree projects of this year’s bachelor’s graduates, we meet personal stories and memories evoked through the transformative force of fire, or through glimmering line-drawings that are poetic and monumental. We meet dilemmas on spirituality and on making, which arise when we recognize the agencies of the materials that we live among. We are invited to eat rocks, to contemplate the longstanding accountabilities of the extractive industry in Sweden. Furthermore, we are invited to enjoy iron jewellery as if it were candy, all while codes and craft traditions are subverted. We are encouraged to stay with the unsettling and the weird, while wondering what it is that makes the familiar such; and to understand grief as an integral part of life, as diverse experiences and instances of loss are manifested. Lastly, we meet objects that raise ambiguous emotions as they long to be interacted with.

Through this year’s degree projects, jewellery and corpus are considered as disciplines that cannot and shouldn’t stand on their own, but that become even more effervescent when they are questioned and expanded.

Beatrice Brovia
Senior Lecturer in Craft, specialising in jewellery