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Monika Strasser

Awarded

Monika Strasser

Serial of jewellery 'Bridalflowers' and 'Erbstücke: Siegelringe'

Jewellery and Objects

Jury report

Bows, Faded Flowers, Skulls
How can jew­ellery ex­press 'eter­nal' themes like tran­sience, per­sonal re­la­tion­ships and fam­ily clans? Monika Strasser trained as a gold­smith in Zürich. While in New York in 2008, she combed the gar­ment dis­trict for ap­pliqués. She found glass beads, se­quins and rhine­stones. These she cut up and re­assem­bled with­out using any con­ven­tional gold­smithing tools. She then made wax neg­a­tives and cast the pieces. Through this process the cheap source ma­te­r­ial was trans­formed into some­thing per­ma­nent and valu­able. She called the out­come – eight mys­te­ri­ous black ob­jects – Bridal Flow­ers. Back in Switzer­land, Strasser re­turned to tra­di­tional gold­smithing tech­niques to cre­ate coun­ter­parts or com­pan­ion pieces to the ob­jects made in New York. Her brooches and neck­laces make os­ten­si­bly ar­chaic shapes look grace­fully el­e­gant. Made of white gold or sil­ver and some­times black­ened, they form pairs with the orig­i­nal ob­ject and are elo­quently ti­tled Garten Eden, Dark Side of the Hon­ey­moon and Bis dass der Tod uns schei­det (Till Death Do Us Part). At first sight, the works look light­hearted and play­ful, of­fer­ing se­duc­tive sur­faces, but on close in­spec­tion they may well take a dif­fer­ent turn: for in­stance on dis­cov­er­ing that the cutouts in one of her ob­jects are the hol­low eyes and mouth of a skull. Tran­sience is a cru­cial con­cern for Monika Strasser.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Monika Strasser
Born in
1976
Education
MA of Fine Arts, Jewellery and Corpus

also in

2005

2007

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