The winners are

Hasan Kurd

It is well known as a mark of the beginning of civilization when humans started to create tools. Over time, these tools have helped their creators achieve their goals and have lead to the development of more tools.
My project seeks to focus on the cultural, material and philosophical relationships between body and tool, culture and language. This is to deal with the tool’s symbolic and utility functions. In the project I question this historic connection by creating abstract tools and jewelry, examining the boundaries and transitions between the tool and body movements, between natural and artificial materials, between geometric and energetic forms, between the holding and what is being held and more.
I chose to focus on these questions by using manual and mechanical tools working in marble stone.
The marble is a culturally and economically charged material, analogi- cal to the human body in terms of absorption, toughness, flexibility and transparency. To me, these features of the marble made it a natural extension or a part of the body. It has a simultaneous relationship with the space around it as well as before the eyes of the observer.

Xinyi Chen

Electronic components have a special place in artist heart– she calls them ‘Artificial Intelligems’. She is fascinated with their shapes, textures, colors, precise structures, digital spirituality, and hidden beauty, and draws from her childhood memory by her computer practitioner mother.

Her practice combines digital-based production processes with traditional crafts and found object, using 3D scanning, printing and laser engraving, to explore the past and the future, with the world she live, creating her own idiom. Setting with electronic components evoke dialogue between digital technology and manual skills that captivates audiences with curiosity and visual delight.

Acting within a broader context of sustainability and the younger generation’s awareness of E-waste, WEEE Recycling Centre formed part of the supply chain.Through the elevation of e-waste as a luxury material with circular economy, her jewellery challenges proposes a transgressive approach to what we value moving forward, highlighting boundary between ‘physical versus digital’ and showing a new way of living in digital awe and pleasure.

Maria Camera-Smith

My craft practice is an exploration of self, body adornment, and nostalgia. I rely on jewelry formats as systems to analyze my environment. The historical and cultural threads that persist through jewelry allow me to place things into a context that can be both expressive and introspective. The traditional hand skills of decorative arts/crafts are integral to my studio practice. The forms that I use are direct casts from trees and plants from geographic locations that hold personal significance. These forms undergo a cycle of fabrication that include casting, mold-making, soldering, and enameling, which often is not linear. Enameling processes allow me to capture imagery and hues that hold nostalgic, sentimental value. I walk through the woods and analyze. Along the way I collect small physical and abstract details. Integrating this content into my practice allows me to immortalize the moments I experienced while working through the emotional weight of that point in time. I craft art jewelry pieces to enable myself to process the landscape that I currently find myself in, while also digging into the roots of who I am as a maker.