Galleria Autori AGC | AGC members gallery
Jivan Astflack
Berlin, DE | London, UK
Jivan Astfalck è un'artista visiva, orafa e docente accademica. Nata a Berlino, dove si è formata come orafa e dove torna regolarmente, vive a Londra da oltre 40 anni. Ha conseguito un dottorato di ricerca in Belle Arti presso la University of the Arts London ed è ora Professor Emeritus alla Birmingham City University (BCU), dove in precedenza ha insegnato presso la nota School of Jewellery. È Visiting Professor presso il Sichuan Fine Art Institute di Chongqing, oltre a numerosi altri progetti di insegnamento e consulenza in Cina. La Prof.ssa Astfalck unisce alla sua attività in studio, che espone a livello internazionale, lo sviluppo creativo e la gestione di progetti come Polyphonous, Whispers&Cries e Kittenhair.
Il suo focus e i suoi interessi di ricerca sono rivolti all'utilizzo della filosofia ermeneutica, della teoria letteraria e di altri modelli di pensiero appropriati come strumenti per indagare le strutture narrative insite negli oggetti artigianali legati al corpo. A suo avviso, la convergenza di pratiche artigianali, di design e di belle arti favorisce l'ampliamento del vocabolario teorico e la mappatura di nuovi territori in cui le pratiche artigianali contribuiscono alla produzione e alla diffusione culturale.
"Per me, il gioiello è un'espressione unica di una narrazione radicata e creata artigianalmente, intimamente legata al corpo, sia a livello sensoriale che intellettuale."
Jivan Astfalck is a visual artist, jeweller and academic. Born in Berlin, where she trained as a goldsmith, she has been living in London for more than 40 years, returning to Berlin regularly. She earned her PhD in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London and is now Professor Emeritus at Birmingham City University (BCU), where she previously taught at the world-renowned School of Jewellery. She is a Visiting Professor at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute in Chongqing, alongside numerous other teaching and consulting projects in China. Prof. Astfalck combines her studio practice, which she exhibits internationally, with creative development and management of projects like Polyphonous, Whispers&Cries, and kittenhair.
Her focus and research interests are in using hermeneutic philosophy, literary theory, and other appropriate thought models as tools to investigate narrative structures embedded in body-related craft objects. In her view, the convergence of crafts, design and fine art practices is conducive to extending the theoretical vocabulary and mapping out new territories where crafts practices contribute to cultural production and dissemination.
“Jewellery for me is unique expression of embedded and g(c)rafted narrative, intimately related to the body - both, sensually and intellectually.”
more about Jivan Astfalck - Academia.edu
Artist statement
I make… mostly by hand.
Some of my objects are wearable, and others are tools of reference, tools for seeing and seeing better. These objects resonate with intimacy and passionate investment; they are signified by a continuous dynamic of rediscovery, recycling of meaning and appropriation. It is body adornment that exists in stark contrast to the overwhelming standardisation generated by mechanised commodity culture. In this context, my use of the assemblage as an art form in jewellery allows me to play with layered metaphors and create artistic representations with multi-layered meanings. The viewer can become an active part and co-creator of the meaning of the work - interpreting the objects, independent of my intentions, and by doing so adding to the layers of meaning and narrative. The objects are sites of memory and fiction, of reflection, visible traces that articulate and represent connections with the invisible and imagined in a complex web of relationships. They are romantic! The ambiguous nature of the notion of the author, the narrative incompleteness of life with the entanglement of histories, those into which we are born and those, which we invent for ourselves, it all adds to how we apply fiction to life. I play with metaphorical symbolisation, and I am interested in jewellery pieces that map out the demarcation lines, where the body meets world, a place, or idea of a place, where narratives are invested in objects to negotiate that gap, complexity, confusion, or conflict. Jewellery is mostly seen and understood as an embellishment to the body as subject and object - my work seeks to rectify this by examining the dialogical relationship between the body, jewellery, and its representation in visual culture, and so questioning whether jewellery is solely about making the body beautiful.
Docenze | Teaching
Since 2009 Professor of Jewellery Art and Design Birmingham City University UK.
Has been teaching on MA and BA University courses in the UK and China
BIFT Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Pechino CN
Collezioni | Public Collections
Castle Museum, Nottingham, UK
Okresni Museum, Turnov, CZ
Grassi Museum Leipzig, DE
Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, DE
Private Collections UK and USA, Susan Cummings Collection, USA
Mostre personali | Solo Exhibitions
2017/2017 Paris (F); London (UK)
Mostre Collettive | Group Exhibitions (selected)
1996/2022 Wroclaw, Cracow, Legnica (PL); Berlin, (DE); Vienna (A); Houston (USA), Munich, Cologne, Berlin, Trier (DE); Beijing, Shanghai (CHN); Strasburg(F); Helsinki (FL); Muhu Island, Estonia: Barcelona(E); Portland (USA); Birmingham, London, Portsmouth, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, (UK); Bangkok (THA); Turnov (CZ); Stockholm, Gothenburg, (SW); Firenze, Lucca (I); Itami, Tokyo (J); Vilnius (LTH); Brussel, Antwerp(B); Rotterdam, Nijmegen (NL);
2015/16, Artistic Lead: JUNK: rubbish-to-gold, charities partnered and socially motivated performative making;
Arts Council of England, Birmingham City University and Council funded, exhibiting in UK, D, online
Pubblicazioni | Publishing
