Biography

"My jewelry is offensive, sensual and opulent. To this day, I pursue one artistic strategy: the citational juxtaposition of found material and individually designed forms. 

Every artistic gesture can be read as a sign that refers to something else.

And it is these signs and the relationships between these signs

in which different levels of meaning open up."

Petra Zimmermann studied Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and has been working as a contemporary studio jewelry artist since 2002. Shifting between design, fashion, applied and fine arts, Zimmermann devotes herself to aesthetic questions about the value, appeal and transience of beauty. Jewelry in its hybridity between autonomous object in space and applied art provides the field of tension for her work.

 

In 2010 she received the Eligius Jewelry Prize of the Province of Salzburg, Austria. 

In 2013, the MAK Vienna presented an overview of her work to date in a solo exhibition. 

In 2022, together with the artist Svenja John, she curated the exhibition "Jewellery & Garment", 10 international jewelry positions and avant-garde fashion in the context of the permanent collection of the Bröhan-Museum in Berlin.
Petra Zimmermann's works can be found in prestigious public and private collections worldwide, including the MAK Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Grassimuseum Leipzig, Dallas Museum of Art and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum NYC, among others.

Works
Exhibitions