GEMZ: WET

The third edition of Current Obsession’s very own Talent Accelerator Programme, whose trajectory spanned 2024 and 2025, found a temporary home at Rotterdam’s De Kunstfabriek, presenting works by six up-and-coming talents – Stefan Boerkamp (NL), Ruochong Cheng (CN), Tina Jiao (CN), rae richards (US), Anna Rusínová (CZ) and Zoé Kiner-Wolff (FR). Almost two years in the making, and following months of lectures and workshops, these six artists were selected from a cohort of 57 international participants to further develop their projects.

Subtle yet powerful connections emerged between the six practices, despite the makers arriving from different continents and distinct jewellery traditions. Together, their work hints at where the field is headed and what it seems to be longing for. There is a renewed reverence for ancient techniques; a turn towards identity as a tool for tracing one’s roots; and a desire to morph into forms that stretch beyond everyday human experience. Some push the body towards augmentation and enhancement, reaching for a cyborgian form of perfection, while others imagine futures in which humans navigate their emotional worlds while  submerged in cities surounded by strangers and the mechanical hum of machines.

These otherworldly, speculative universes were brought together in both a publication and an exhibition curated by Min Dai, a Chinese-born, Switzerland-based visual artist whose practice moves between technology, memory, and intimacy within contemporary image culture. Working with traditional photography alongside AI image-making, Min captures worlds, obsessions, and emotional landscapes through stories that hover between the real and the imagined.

Mirroring the fluid, shape-shifting realities, where intimacy meets excess, the artificial merges with the natural, and the line between digital and physical blurs. The artworks transcend their materiality, offering a reality in which jewellery and body become one. Here, adornment is no longer fixed to the solid, upright body but spreads, leaks and morphs.

Horny is a joint venture of two artists, Zoé Kiner-Wolff and François Briand, a jewellery artist creating and a glassmaker. ‘My initial motivation was seeing jewellery as a way to make my body my own.’ explains Kiner-Wolff. Her childhood struggles with gender identity and body acceptance fueled the desire to reclaim her physicality through self-adornment. Through the years, she found dildos to play a similar role in shaping the perception of physical self. When Kiner-Wolff connected with François Briand, he described his practice of glass blowing as means of exploration of the self and his sexuality alike. The artists likened their practices to sexual acts; in both cases you get to know your own body. ‘By making love, we go beyond the limits of our bodies for a moment – through gestures, posture and imagination. Through sex, through contact with other bodies, by sharing our bodies, we transform ourselves.’

Body Tuning takes bodily metamorphosis a step further. Dutch visual designer and multimedia artist Stefan Boerkamp traces his inspiration to car-optimisation culture, hence, the ‘tuning’. He likens the human form to a vehicle: originally developed to perform certain functions, more or less uniform in purpose, its features bestowed upon us involuntarily. But once a vehicle leaves the factory – or once our physique develops – the possibility of ‘personalising’ it emerges. ‘Normally we wouldn’t decorate the shin; it’s associated more with protection, like in sports. But what happens if we give it a ‘decoration’ like on a car, something that becomes a place to express identity? That’s where these ideas come from,’ he explains. The finished pieces use car-wrap textures, stickers, vibrant paint and glossy coats, drawing on both medical joint revision surgery and car modification.

Among the final artworks are modular chain links that can function simultaneously as necklaces, bracelets, or keychains. This is TOUCH GRASS / PLUG & PLAY by rae richards, who examines how seamlessly, and eerily, technology has embedded itself in our lives, so much so, that we aren’t fully aware of the extent. ‘Much like systems of gender and sex, these infrastructures shape human interaction and connection, embedded in power relations,’ she notes.

Meanwhile, Ruochong Cheng reflects on the complexities of being an individual within a society which pressure often aims to homogenise the members in the collection Mistheart: Urban Hermit’s Poetic Resistance in Wearable Mist. He presents four works, each intended to sensorially represent an emotion, ranging from hope, melancholy, and nostalgia to aloofness, happiness, Zen, and tranquillity.

Anna Rusínová reached within herself and her own experience with the concept of a souvenir. She examined the similarities between jewellery and trinkets and their function as physical memories, symbols and decoration. Trinket Hunters materialises in a form of small series of detachable boxes or pockets for storing the most necessary and desirable finds.

Based in London, Tina Jiao, a Chinese jewellery artist specialising in traditional jade carving techniques such as the Devil’s work ball and chain carving. In Roots to Fruits, Jiao visualises the process of becoming, from the seed to full grown fruit, and the space for finding oneself within that cyclical process. At the roots of her collection lay comfort, wearability and function. By using jade as her material, she wishes to shift people’s perception of the gemstone as fragile or a ceremonial relic.

The thrid cycle of GEMZ may have come to an end, but for these six up-and-coming artists, it’s only a beginning. With a deeper understanding of the field and their crafts honed to perfection, the six talents are ready to make waves in the jewellery industry, their voices a driving force for change and reflection. For those who are still waiting to be heard, the programme will resume in 2026/2027 for its fourth cycle. To find out about the next edition and the application process, keep an eye out for our social media posts as well as the Current Obsession and GEMZ website.