What is the shared language we speak? Which pieces of jewelry are part of our common vocabulary?
Initially, the ones without authorship, those that are not centered on an author’s personal feelings but rather offer us space to read and evoke.
Offerings / Fragments of an autobiography
Iris Eichenberg / Jimena Ríos
The jewelry found in folklore serves as a testament, confirming the effectiveness of the symbolic language of wearable objects, and in them, the act of making becomes a tool for telling, celebrating, and healing.
Everything started with ex votos-objects that don't exist isolated. They are material forms of testimony, a proof, and at the same time, they are evidence of events, fragments of an autobiography.
Now we are making our own offerings; we are writing with jewels, the language we know, the biography of our relationship.
Eichenberg & Rios will be present at the opening.
After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 1994, Iris Eichenberg worked as an independent artist, art educator, part-time curator, and co-organizer of art-related events. She began teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1996, where she was Head of the Jewelry Department. Since 2006 she has been an Artist in Residence and Head of the Metalsmithing Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA. Iris Eichenberg is regularly exhibiting, invited to lecture, act as visiting critic, and holds workshops at various art academies around the world.
Jimena Ríos lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied jewelry at the Escola Massana School of Art and Design in Barcelona, Spain and Alchimia Contemporary Jewelry School in Florence, Italy. In 2013 she founded Taller Eloi in Buenos Aires, to teach and organize workshops and exhibitions. She works as an educator, curator and editor.
Iris and Jimena's paths crossed in 2016 and become entwined through their common interest in ex-votos: objects which convey a desire or longing and are made out of necessity. Together they have hosted a workshop in Buenos Aires, facilitated a student exchange between Cranbrook Academy of Art and Taller Eloi, and curated exhibitions. In 2020 they both created the Hand Medal project.
