Katarina Ekart challenges conventional boundaries between textiles, contemporary jewellery and digital fabrication. Working intuitively yet methodically, she combines textile logic, metal and 3D-printed structures to create sculptural jewellery that questions material hierarchies and the relationship between craft, technology and the body. Her work focuses on material behaviour, process and transformation. Ornament is secondary.
Born in Slovenia and based in Antwerp, Belgium, she holds a master’s degree in arts and works as a multidisciplinary designer. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and design contexts, positioning her practice between art, design and material research.
Current Obsession: Could you tell us the story behind your graduation project and what drew you to the subject?
Katarina Ekart: Moving from Slovenia to Belgium unexpectedly changed the way I looked at things I had always taken for granted. One of those things was lace.
It was something I barely noticed while living at home. Yet when I moved abroad, I packed a few lace pieces with me without really thinking about it. Only later did I realise that they had become a connection to a different rhythm of life.
For me, lace is not only about craft or tradition. It reminds me of my grandparents’ home, where time feels slower, quieter and more attentive. Things are repaired instead of replaced, conversations are unhurried and everyday objects stay with you for years. In contrast, I watched my parents’ generation live inside a constant cycle of work, responsibilities, mortgages and deadlines. Not because they wanted to, but because that is what contemporary life demands. There is simply no time left for practices that require patience without producing immediate results.
That contrast became the starting point for my graduation project. I wasn’t interested in preserving lace as a nostalgic object. Instead, I wanted to ask what happens when a rhythm of making that depends on slowness is placed inside a culture built around speed.
The works move between different experiences of time. Repetitive gestures such as crossing, twisting, pinning and threading allow time to settle into the surface, while fragments of lace appear on disposable objects like shopping bags, tissues and plastic gloves – objects designed to be used briefly and discarded. The two temporalities are forced to exist together.
The project is ultimately about a question that feels increasingly relevant today: how do we live with a desire for slowness in a world that no longer makes space for it? Rather than preserving lace, I wanted to preserve something less tangible – its rhythm, its attention and the way it asks us to experience time differently.
CO: Beyond the gallery, where do you see your work taking root and finding its life? Who do you hope to reach with your work?
KE: In people’s homes.
I’m more interested in reaching people who recognise this feeling of longing for a slower rhythm – people who feel that time is constantly slipping away and who miss the space to pay attention. If someone sees the work and feels understood, or is reminded to slow down, even for a moment, then it has found its purpose.
Exhibitions are equally important because they create space for reflection and conversation. They allow the work to raise questions about the pace of contemporary life and the value of time, care and attention. But I like the idea that its longest life happens elsewhere: in homes, where it can quietly accompany everyday routines and continue to reveal new meanings over time.
CO: What’s your favourite studio ritual?
KE: Surrounding myself with completely different materials and objects before I start working. My table is usually covered with everything from metal and textiles to small things I’ve collected at flea markets.
Then I simply begin making unexpected connections between them. Sometimes it works immediately, sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but that’s the part I enjoy the most. I love watching two objects that seem to have nothing in common suddenly start communicating – through their forms, their materials, their contrasts or the meanings they carry.
