GEMZ 2025: WET

14 – 29 November 2025, De Kunstfabriek, Rotterdam (NL)

Work by rae richards

GEMZ: WET is a book and exhibition showcasing the results of the eponymous talent accelerator programme by Current Obsession. The presented works fuse design, art and adornment, and were specifically developed for this exhibition.

This edition was born from the practices of our GEMZ talents, each one tracing fluid lines between intimacy and excess, artifice and nature, digital matter and living touch. Their shared attraction to the otherworldly and the unexpected carried this book and exhibition forward, pulling jewellery out of its traditional frames and into speculative worlds soaked with desire and possibility.

Here, adornment is no longer fixed to the solid, upright body but spreads, leaks, morphs – adorning beings that might swim, hover, shapeshift.

Work by Tina Jiao • Photography by Anwyn Howarth

Work by Zoe Kinerr-Wolff and Anna Rusínová

Guided by the experimental vision of GEMZ Artistic Director Min Dai, working between traditional photography and AI image-making, and between reality and imagination, this GEMZ cycle unfolds as a compelling visual journey into watery, dreamlike worlds.

Work by Tina Jiao and Stefan Boerkamp

Work by Anna Rusínová

The third cycle of the GEMZ Talent Accelerator Programme spanned 2024 and 2025. From a pool of 57 international participants, and following months of lectures and workshops, six emerging talents – Stefan Boerkamp (NL), Ruochong Cheng (CN), Tina Jiao (CN), rae richards (US), Anna Rusínová (CZ) and Zoé Kiner-Wolff (FR) – were selected to develop their projects under the one-to-one guidance of jewellery artists Benedikt Fischer, Jing He and Irma Földényi.

GEMZ: WET is supported by:

Creative Industries Fund NL
Municipality of Rotterdam
Cultuurfonds
De Kunstfabriek

GEMZ: WET is sponsored by:

Hennessy

IMAGES:

Anwyn Howarth