#1 Focus Week
#2 Focus Week
#3 Focus Week
#4 Focus Week
Ongoing
2023
2021
OBSESSED! Jewellery Festival
OBSESSED! began as an attempt to connect, promote and discuss a number of significant, yet uncoordinated jewellery events (exhibitions, fairs and symposia) occurring throughout The Netherlands in November 2017.
The aim was to achieve a larger cultural impact by uniting these events and institutions (such as Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, CODA Apeldoorn, Design Museum Den Bosch) into one programme under one name, and inviting local and international artists and public to join in.
Several years prior, Current Obsession team have been contemplating the idea of organising a ‘jewellery biennial’ in The Netherlands, to reflect the local heritage and the history of the discipline. A happening that would be avant-garde, edgy, creative, but also include different kinds of jewellery (such as antique and fine jewellery) as well as body-related practices from neighbouring disciplines (fashion, design, performance, etc.) So when back in 2017 it came to our attention that a series of major jewellery-related events would incidentally occur in different cities throughout The Netherlands, we immediately knew this was our chance!
The Festival aims to boost public interest towards the local artistic jewellery scene and to help re-establish The Netherlands as a leading creative force in the field of contemporary jewellery, underpinning rich history of innovation, experimentation and fresh ideas. With the guidance and support of Marjan Unger (art historian, author of the book Jewellery Matters, and one of the organisers of the eponymous Rijksmuseum Symposium) and Ruudt Peters (renown jewellery artist), Current Obsession began setting up festival’s framework, developing in-depth content and possibilities for exchange.
We see OBSESSED! as an ideal project to help attract a larger public interest to the field of artistic jewellery. Therefore, our main goal here is to create accessible content that would introduce jewellery to general public in a captivating way, and distribute this content for free, making it available countrywide in a wide range of locations dedicated to design and culture.
All Strings Attached!
Are you obsessed with jewellery? We are too!
And what’s more satisfying than rifling through your most precious pieces and rediscovering beloved treasures?
Obsessed! Jewellery Festival returns for its fourth edition this November, to collect every loose strand of jewellery across the Netherlands and Belgium, holding each piece up to the light to tell its story.
Themed All Strings Attached! this edition brings us on a multi-weekend treasure hunt from Amsterdam to Antwerp, assembling our family of jewels around fresh new cords.
Obsessed! continues an initiative by Current Obsession Magazine to link artists, galleries and institutions across the Netherlands and Belgium, through jewellery-related events that incorporate every format from digital adornment to films to physical objects… as ever, exploring jewellery as a vessel for meaning, empowerment and belonging.
Upcoming!
Want to see every last event on this incredible programme?
Not sure where to start?
We’ve got your back!
We are preparing a delicious guide that will help you navigate and plan your trip in the best way possible!
Talk to us!
Email: obsessed@current-obsession.com
OBSESSED! Team:
Guusje de Bruin — Fundraising
Marina Elenskaya — Creative Direction
Matthias Kispert — Sound Design
Vivian R. Morad — Project Management
Margaret Munchheimer — Obsessed! Paper Editor
Sofia Nikolaeva — Graphic Design
Sven Raju — Website Design
Frank Verkade — Programme Management
Marc Ferrer Vives and Etto Pacoste — Visuals and Identity
Keen to participate in the OBSESSED! 2025 programme?
The application for our next edition will open in Spring 2024!
Selection Guidelines
OBSESSED! Jewellery Festival is an initiative that carefully strings together various jewellery related events throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. In order to create as widely accessible a programme as possible, we reserve the option to include or prioritise applications, which are in alignment with the OBSESSED! spirit and the following ideals:
Multidisciplinarity — The festival programming invites a multidisciplinary approach, including all manner of events from the full spectrum of the jewellery universe.
Accessibility — We encourage events which allow accessibility for the general public, and reserve the right not to include proposals which focus too narrowly in any niche of interest as to discourage participation on a wider scale.
Community — The festival aims to foster and strengthen a sense of community from within the field of jewellery. Therefore, we encourage and may prioritise group exhibitions, collective practices, collaboration and cooperation between multiple artists, etc.
Relevance — In keeping with the festival’s objective to respond to and amplify voices within the field, we actively work to address common themes which we observe to be of particular urgency and interest to broad segments of the jewellery community at a given time. While we strive to spotlight all avenues of artistic inquiry, for the 2023 Edition, a few examples of themes we are broadly working with include: 1. Collective Making and Communal or Participatory Practices; 2. AI and Digital Embodiment; 3. Ritual, Memento and Object as a Mediator; 4. The Ethics of Materials.
As facilitators and coordinators, our main focus and attention goes toward providing digital and printed communication, and providing the information necessary to connect all interested parties, to give you the best possible festival! For this reason, we will also prioritise those artists who have a secured location or leads for locations for their event first, before providing whatever assistance we may be able to offer to less comprehensive proposals.
Supported by
Partners
