Awarded
Monika Strasser
'Schattenbroschen'
Jewellery and Objects
Awarded
'Schattenbroschen'
Jewellery and Objects
Reshaping heirlooms
How can one deal with one's own family history? The designer Monika Strasser finds the starting-point for her jewellery creations in something that fills some people with pride and is a burden to others. The idea comes from meals shared at the family table: people argue and laugh, but they also quarrel at this table, says Monika Strasser. She inherited cutlery from her family, and she now transforms it into very special jewellery items she calls 'Schattenbroschen' (shadow-brooches): you can't run away from family history, says Monika Strasser, just as you can't shake off your shadow either.
These are amazing items of jewellery: unusually shaped, and it is hard to work out what they are for at a first glance. Monika Strasser saws out the inside upper parts of cutlery handles so that only a frame remains. She fixes two of these frame-like structures in silverplated metal one below the other at angle of about 30 degrees; this produces a shadow-brooch. A companion piece attaches the brooch to the inside of the dress. When worn, the brooch casts a shadow on the fabric, hence the name. The set of four, called the 'Schattenbroschen-Familie' (shadow-brooch family), is complemented by another kind of jewellery, called 'Schatteninnenbroschen' (shadow inner-brooches). Here the internal outline of the shadow brooches is picked up and constructed in gold.
The brooches are lovingly presented in nostalgic-looking baroque cases made of wood and fabric. Here again a game is being played with 'in praise of shadow': the shadow brooches are presented like cutlery and a shadow is stitched in to the fabric. Monika Strasser uses the phrase recycling history for this technique of appropriating family history creatively and reshaping it by sawing it up and putting it together again.
Peter Stohler
Monika Strasser
Geboren Né/Née en Nato/Nata in Born in
1976
Education
MA of Fine Arts, Jewellery and Corpus