Munich Jewellery Week 2021 Participants

Hi, welcome to Munich Jewellery Week!

The creation of this Current Obsession Paper x Munich Jewellery Week 2021 came in the light of cancellations and postponements of exhibitions and fairs around the world. Facing the uncertainties of the current situation we decided to invite the MJW community to contribute to a beautiful, printed publication, designed and published by Current Obsession, and delivered directly to the doorsteps of potential visitors who aren’t able to travel to Munich.

Through an open call, artists, curators, academies, and cultural institutions were invited to create exhibitions on the pages of the Current Obsession Paper, just as they would in a space in Munich. In typical MJW fashion, no project or a piece of jewellery was edited out. Because this is what we all love about MJW — its openness, and the way it celebrates all jewellery. The democratic and everexpanding nature of MJW is reflected by the size of this publication — the bulkiest one we have ever made (256 pages!) and its unbounded design – where every page could become a potential cover, or could just be pulled out and hung on your wall as a poster, to engage with the work and get inspired.

1 EXHIBITIONS IN PRINT — the one you are holding in your hands — consists of submitted exhibitions by artists, curators, galleries and cultural institutions from around the globe: from New Zealand to Denmark, from Mexico to South Korea, and everywhere in between, these manifestations of jewellery are beautiful editorials, staged exhibition space environments, fictional stories and more.

2 JEWELLERY ENVIRONMENTS — you will find 160 individual jewels submitted to us via the MJW Basic Campaigns hiding inside eight incredible commissioned illustrations designed by Théophile Bartz, Benjamin Langford, Jānis Melderis, MITSUME, The Scissorhands, Thami, Andrew Tseng and Elvis Wesley. The invited image-makers created fictional environments — underwater and outer space worlds, fantastical characters, architectural and urban landscapes, — with techniques ranging from analogue and mixed media collage, digital illustration, to rendering and digital hand-sculpting, to create their posters. In a truly interdisciplinary collaboration, we have paired each image-maker with jewellery that fits their overall aesthetic, speaks the same language, or touches upon same themes.These glossy universes can be found wrapped around and folded into the Paper.

3 CURRENT OBSESSION CONTENT — our traditional CO Paper features commissioned articles and interviews with artists, think pieces, and advertorials to give you a scoop of not only what is happening in Munich right now, but also in the bigger Contemporary Jewellery world.

4 A collaboration with CRUCIBLE — a platform curated by a collective of African, Caribbean and Asian heritage womxn artists Finchittida Finch, Kalkidan Hoex and Roxanne Simone — is the one we are particularly proud of. Crucible features work by individuals and communities that identify as black, brown, people of colour women/ womxn artists, thinkers, community groups, collectives, jewellers, writers, experiencers, academics, philosophers, storytellers and truth-seekers — all full of creative agency and free self-expression. Crucible as a space was developed in response to the urgency for dialogue surrounding unheard voices and becomes a vessel for exploring the nuances of intersectional identities by empowering those who come together here.

For everyone: As we tried our best to keep this paper diverse, relevant and entertaining, we hope that we have given you enough creative ways to read it and engage with it. It is a tangible, embodied content, and that was of the utmost importance for us. We are obsessed with the idea of seeing these pages hanging on your studio walls, pasted on your mood boards, collaged and mixed with what ever it is you are doing!

So, we ask you to show us the way you read your Paper, take a picture of what you end up doing with it and post it. Don’t forget to add #HOWIREADMYPAPER, so we can repost!

xoxo CO Team