Lecture: Katja Prins

Lecture Title: Brave New World

Katja Prins will discuss her practice as a jewelry artist, which has evolved over the last 22 years. This lecture will focus in particular on her fascination with the relationship between technology and the human body. Specifically engaged with how technology functions as our support structure, she is both anxious and excited about the simultaneously healing-protective and toxic-destructive properties of technology. This ambivalent fascination provides her with imagery that is reflected through her work.

Katja Prins (Haarlem, NL, 1970) graduated at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1997 and has been working as an independent jewelry artist ever since. She has had solo and group exhibitions in Europe, USA, Asia and Russia.

She has also lectured and taught at various institutions such as Hiko Minzuno College, Tokyo, JP, Tainan National University of the Arts, Tainan, TW, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, USA, RISD, Providence, USA, University of Arts & Design Samara, RU, Konstfack, Stockholm, SE, Alchimia, Florence, IT and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, NL.

Her work can be found in public collections such as Cooper Hewitt Museum New York, USA, Museum of Arts and Design New York, USA, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, NL, SM’s Stedelijk Museum ‘s Hertogenbosch, NL, Mint Museum of Craft & Design, Charlotte, USA, CODA Museum Apeldoorn, NL, Museum Arnhem, NL, Musée des Beaux Arts, Marseille, France and the Schmuck Museum, Pforzheim, DE.

In 2009 she published her monography “The Uncanny Valley”, which gives an overview of all her work. She’s been nominated for the Mari Funaki Award for Contemporary Jewelry 2016 and the Design Award Rotterdam 1999, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, NL and won the Darling Publications Jeweller of the Year Award 2009.

Sponsored by the Metalsmithing Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. 

All lectures are free and held in deSalle Auditorium at Cranbrook Art Museum.