Liesbet Bussche

“I am not a jewelry designer, but I walk and work with the gaze of one.”

profile

Liesbet Bussche (1980, Belgium) is an Amsterdam-based artist known for her public installations, artworks, objects, printed matter and occasionally wearable pieces, based on archetypal jewelry and associated features. After studying cinematography and a brief career as a television journalist, she fell for all sorts of jewelry, from friendship bracelets to pearl necklaces.

Since 2009, she runs her own studio where she produces both independent and commissioned work. She is internationally known for her Urban Jewelry series; site-specific installations in which she transforms existing street elements into large jewels they already appeared to be. Commissioned projects have been installed in The Netherland, Belgium, France, Taiwan and the United States in cooperation with municipalities and cultural institutions. 

Bussche exhibits and teaches worldwide. She studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academie (BDes, 2009, NL) and St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp (BFA, 2007 & MFA, 2016, BE). She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Arts at Hasselt University and PXL-MAD School of Arts (BE).

KNOWN FOR HER PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS AND JEWELRY-INSPIRED ARTWORKS

 
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fun fact

Brick by Brick

I am trained as a jewelry designer and jewelry is omnipresent in my work, but I rarely make wearable pieces. Yet one of my latest works is Brick by Brick, a series of necklaces with pendants shaped like trowels, cut from bricks and hung from a hand-woven cord. A connection between the body and the city through an intimate practice like jewelry design. The diversity of my work, ranging from art in public spaces to printed matter through wearable jewelry and objects, makes the process sometimes complicated, but also very exciting.

Brick, hand-woven cord, 2023

artist statement

I am not a jewelry designer, but I walk and work with the gaze of one. I see jewelry everywhere, but mostly on the street. In my work, the city plays a prominent role as a reservoir of inspiration, source of material, area of intervention and domain of reflection. My way of working is concept-based and research-driven. It is characterized by using a wide variety of media and carefully selected materials and techniques with close attention to detail. 

Pivot

Urban Jewelry (pearl necklace)

The luminous pearl necklace installed in Taipei in the summer of 2011 was my first major commission in public space. I designed the work from a distance, wandering through the streets of Taipei via Google Earth. The upper pearl is the existing streetlamp that made me imagine this necklace. I realized the work itself on site, with my partner and a team of volunteers. 

Commissioned by Fubon Art Foundation, Taiwan, Taipei

Plastic globes, lamps, cables, electronics, 2011

 

“Make. Doubt every now and then. Remake.”

 

purpose

Urban Jewelry (earrings)

Jewelry is a universal language, and everyone uses the street. (Although this makes it a complex environment, at the same time extremely accessible and highly regulated.) 

I have always considered my work to be straightforward. This pair of earrings in an Amsterdam street, which has resonated around the world, represents this idea. It also illustrates the potency of jewelry as a storyteller. An addition to an existing urban element, in this case a concrete anti-parking bollard, creates a re-reading of a place that is familiar to us. In my PhD, I try to delve deeper into this line of thinking and unravel what it means to look, walk and work in public space as a jewelry designer. 

There is not one big thing that drives me. I am reluctant to romanticize the discipline. What drives me varies from day to day. It may be the puzzle of aligning a concept and execution or mastering a material or technique. It can also be the exchange between teacher and student or writing a good text. It may be the work of a colleague that spurs me on, or an imagined story behind a trinket I found at the thrift store. 

Brass, 2009

people

Casually Dropped Pearl Necklaces

I was working as a television journalist, but I felt too young to hold my own in this often ego-driven field. I decided to change careers and chose jewelry based on the romance of the craft. It is therefore all the more remarkable that I am rarely behind the jeweler’s workbench. Every project requires new techniques, ranging from installing electricity to cutting bricks. I enjoy figuring that out and it is part of my process. 

Moving from a mass medium like television to the intimacy of a jewelry practice has influenced the way I work. Casually Dropped Pearl Necklaces is one of my printmaking projects in which I use a medium that seeks to communicate with a wide audience. The temporary nature of this work, it may be covered over in the next hour, contrasts with the attention and time I devoted to it. That kind of valuable care is in the DNA of a jeweler and thus in mine, even if the end result is transient.

160 grams mat paper, 2016

professional

Street and Stones

Streets and Stones is a work based on an intriguing collection of pearwood crystallographic models by mineralogist René Just Haüy from the beginning of the 19th century. The scientific models are accurate crystal shapes linked to their elemental structure. My interpretation is a wooden box filled with models made of urban materials. The work touches on so many levels of my interests: how it connects jewelry and the city, how it functions as a material library, how each material requires its own modus operandi, how it thematically refers to a component of the jewelry canon. 

A colleague of mine explained how his studio was filled with projects at every stage of progress: nascent ideas, projects in process and nearly completed assignments. Since then, I try to work a little less project-based by embracing this method, which creates space for projects to mature and ideas to be picked up and worked on later.

I cherish the fact that I can create both independent and commissioned work. I like to retain the freedom to have that choice. I also find teaching and the contact with students a valuable addition to my practice. But I do notice that my practice is getting too busy and especially the commissioned work is getting too big to run alone. It is time to think about expansion and further professionalization. 

Crystals: Asphalt, brick, paving stone, traffic lights (red, orange & green), steel, diamond plate, traffic signs (road closed & no parking), warning tape; various dimensions. Box: Beech wood, birch plywood, brass, 2019

passion

Window Diamond

It took quite a few years to figure out what I wanted to do with jewelry. I struggled with the small size of it. Working larger and in public space has stimulated my curiosity in jewelry. I find passion a difficult, blinding word, although I have a deep-seated interest in how jewelry can tell a story and how I can tell stories with jewelry. But I consider it primarily a work domain, a field to explore, closely interwoven with our society. 

How to operate between inside and outside, between the street and the gallery, has always been a quest in my practice. Window Diamonds is a work that endures in a more traditional artist’s environment and is not a representation of an outdoor work. The work is composed of windows and assembled with hinges. Making a paper model, to visualize the concept, was fairly easy, but the making process was complicated. As with other works, I enter different worlds in my search for materials and techniques. I have noticed that atypical questions asked by artists opens many doors. 

Wood, glass, steel, paint, 2019

“Working big is not a choice but is in my nature. My first school assignments already didn’t fit on the kitchen table.”

www.liesbetbussche.com

 
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