Jeannette Knigge
she/her
Deventer, Overijssel, The Netherlands
Jeannette Knigge was born in 1973 in Emmen, the Netherlands. She studied goldsmithing in Schoonhoven, including a year of internship with Peter de Wit in Linköping, Sweden. After this she went to Art school, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Kampen.
Since 2001 she has been combining her work as a visual artist with running her own business as a goldsmith under her brand name KunstGoud. Jeannette is working and living in Deventer, the Netherlands. In 2022 she decided to broaden her horizons and got accepted at MASieraad, master jewellery design and arts, where she will graduate June 2024.
Jeannette participated in several exhibitions during the years: 2023 Group exhibition Nevengeul in Zwolle; 2023 Potluck Burp, Munich Jewellery week; 2023 Residency in an elderly home; 2022 Group exhibition in the Bergkerk, The State of…..the Landscape; 2021 IJsselbiënnale, installation Melckmaegden in the river IJssel.
“Jeannette Knigge applied to MASieraad, looking for a boost in her artistic practice. In this period, she embraced the experiment and rediscovered her artistic qualities. She experimented with several materials, investigating issues of the body. What is beauty, and when is someone attractive? What are taught habits, and when is something my own identity? Jeannette tries to find answers to these questions in her contemporary jewellery pieces.”
How does your work relate to the theme transformation— How does the work translate joy into strength?
"The work 'To Shave Or Not To Shave…' is offering an insight into the discussion of who you are as a person. What decisions do you make based on tradition or based on what you’re told and what you see around you? How do you look at yourself because of this, and how do you want to be looked upon? Realising that these structures exist in life and deciding to accept or decline them will help identify who you really are. Joy will come if you can allow yourself to make your own choices, and with that, you will automatically feel your own strength. Can you transform into the real you?
'To Shave Or Not To Shave...' is showing an oval that was often used in mourning jewellery. With this piece I'm mourning the traditions we’re taught and prejudices people have about choices someone makes about their own body."
"To Shave Or Not To Shave…",
Perspex, silver, armpit hair, toilet paper, 5" x 3.8" x .4", 2023
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“I can relate to the feeling of not being happy with your body. So, now, at the age of 50, I’m making pieces about this subject, the body, the mind, not as a therapy (although it might turn out to be therapy;-)) but more so, to be honest about it.
During this process, I discovered a difference between physical work and video/ performance. It looks easier to tough people when they can see you doing something (or nothing), as the waiting Abramovic does in Rhythm0. When looking at certain performances, you feel like a voyageur; you don’t want to look, but you look anyway. It hurts… How different it is in a physical piece of art, where to me, it seems there is more distance between the maker and the audience.
My question is how to get this feeling of harrow and resistance in a piece of jewellery. Isn’t jewellery meant to make you look better? You want people to look at it, to look at you, not to scare them away.… And how to make it about the body, which is needed to wear these pieces. As Liesbeth den Besten states in her book On Jewellery, “Just like fashion, jewellery forms an extra layer on the body but is very rarely about the body itself. “ So how do you make a compelling piece but tell a poignant story about body and mind?”
