I am a Hungarian jewellery artist based in London. I trained as a financial analyst and gravitated toward jewellery after seven years in the financial sector. My work is informed by my own journey from complex analysis to handcraft, economics to design.
With a master’s in economic policy, I received my BA in Jewellery Design from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in 2018 and MA from Sandberg Instituut, Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 2020. My work investigates the impact of contemporary capitalism on daily life and personal identity, both of which play a vital role in my collections.
I have received numerous awards including a Marzee Graduate prize, Cartier Scholarship, Swarovski ‘Power of Transformation’ prize and the MullenLowe NOVA, Unilever ‘Unstereotype’ Award. My work has been exhibited internationally in shows including Collect London, Design Miami, Schmuck, and can be found in several public and private collections.
In my opinion contemporary art jewellery is less a spotlighted or valued area amongst arts in general. Winning the NOVA Award as a jewellery designer has been an initiator for me, the positive feedback I’ve needed to gain confidence and momentum. Being benchmarked against other art disciplines represented at CSM also made me more aware and open up in my recent projects towards a more interdisciplinary approach.
The NOVA Award has brought lots of visibility for me and also helped me establish my own creative space, my own workshop. As I am a maker, and I work with various materials, it needed heavy investment. The NOVA prize has started the most exciting years of my professional career and I am very thankful for that.
Reference: FABIAN006
Title: Dear 2021...
Date: 2021
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: Details: From the collection 'You, Me and Your Stuff’
Media: Jewellery item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: The new works I made continuing the series ‘You, me and your stuff’ for my solo exhibition at Galerie Marzee, are focusing on artefacts with a role in building and maintaining social relations. I transformed objects which are often associated with shared moments, having a coffee with friends or enjoying a glass of wine in the evening. These pieces are reminding us to the times before and ask the question whether we find the way back to the old or accommodate a new norm.
Reference: FABIAN012
Title: Love Machine
Date: 2021
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: From the collection 'You, Me and Your Stuff’
Media: Jewellery item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: The new works I made continuing the series ‘You, me and your stuff’ for my solo exhibition at Galerie Marzee, are focusing on artefacts with a role in building and maintaining social relations. I transformed objects which are often associated with shared moments, having a coffee with friends or enjoying a glass of wine in the evening. These pieces are reminding us to the times before and ask the question whether we find the way back to the old or accommodate a new norm.
Reference: FABIAN003
Title: Drunk Chain
Date: 2020
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: From the collection 'You, Me and Your Stuff’
Media: Jewellery item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: Making jewellery by reconstructing everyday objects identified as being important in people’s lives, this project investigates the role of artefacts as signifiers of identity and as a potential way through that value can be created and expressed. I asked 60 individuals to name their most essential possessions, which they feel best represent themselves and condensed the outcome of the survey into a series of necklaces, analysing and reflecting on our material culture. The work visualises the lasting bond we have with our objects, using jewellery as an intermediary between the self and society and as a mediator of value and identity. Building on the tension between commodity and uniqueness, art and design in contemporary society, the project explores the controversies of everyday life and aims to stimulate a dialogue on the necessity and value of our things.
Reference: FABIAN009
Title: You, Me and Your Stash
Date: 2021
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: From the collection 'You, Me and Your Stuff’
Media: Jewellery item
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: The new works I made continuing the series ‘You, me and your stuff’ for my solo exhibition at Galerie Marzee, are focusing on artefacts with a role in building and maintaining social relations. I transformed objects which are often associated with shared moments, having a coffee with friends or enjoying a glass of wine in the evening. These pieces are reminding us to the times before and ask the question whether we find the way back to the old or accommodate a new norm.
Reference: FABIAN019
Title: 15 Creators Dine Together
Date: 2019
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: A photo of the 15 creators’ dinner together, the wonderful memory that was embodied into the necklace created from the wine bottles.
Media: Photograph
Credit: Courtesy of the artist.
Description: The starting point of my project was a workshop with some fellow jewellery makers in Belgium in 2019 summer. I collected the wine bottles we drank every evening, and transformed them into a chain.
For me this piece instantly became a condensed form of our shared memories of this experience. This work made me think about the role of everyday objects’ in our life, with special emphasis on commodities. Therefore the image I name is a photo of the 15 creators’ dinner together, the wonderful memory that was embodied into the necklace I’ve created from the wine bottles.
Reference: FABIAN022
Title: Biglink Necklace
Date: 2018
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: CSM Museum & Study Collection
Media: Jewellery iten
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: The body of work ‘Chains for an Average Woman’ is based on the notion of a woman’s relationship to self-identity, chained as it is to the female personas of our time. I am giving traditional chains a new purpose and a new form, each of my works enacts one female archetype. Playing with the symbolism of chains, the pieces raise the question of whether women are more liberated or constrained in our modern society.
Even as the nature of identity becomes increasingly transient and complex, recent cultural trends have awakened outdated classifications and stereotypes in the representation of women in popular culture. ‘Chains for an average woman’ is a literal expression of the diverse amount of roles mass-media, and by extension society encourages in women. With the large metal-chain necklaces, I draw connections between self-identity and female stereotype, exploring how individuality develops against a background of economic and cultural conditions.
Reference: FABIAN014
Title: Material Culture and Mass Consumption - Social Archaeology
Date: 1997
Author: Daniel Miller
Details: Material Culture and Mass Consumption offers an in-depth exploration of objects, objectification, ideology, and materialism in modern society.
Media: Publication
Credit: wiley.com/Material+Culture+and+Mass+Consumerism
Description: The most influential sources in my research were several studies of Daniel Miller and Judy Attfield, which offer in depth analysis of material culture.
Reference: FABIAN015
Title: The Comfort of Things
Date: 2008
Author: Daniel Miller
Details: The diversity of contemporary London is extraordinary, and begs to be better understood. Never before have so many people from such diverse backgrounds been free to mix in close proximity to each other. But increasingly people's lives take place behind the closed doors of private houses. How can we gain an insight into what those lives are like today? How could one ever come to know perfect strangers?
Media: Publication
Credit: politybooks.com/the-comfort-of-things
Description: The most influential sources in my research were several studies of Daniel Miller and Judy Attfield, which offer in depth analysis of material culture.
Reference: FABIAN016
Title: Stuff
Date: 2009
Author: Daniel Miller
Details: Things make us just as much as we make things. And yet, unlike the study of languages or places, there is no discipline devoted to the study of material things. This book shows why it is time to acknowledge and confront this neglect and how much we can learn from focusing our attention on stuff.
Media: Publication
Credit: politybooks.com/stuff
Description: The most influential sources in my research were several studies of Daniel Miller and Judy Attfield, which offer in depth analysis of material culture.
Reference: FABIAN017
Title: Wild Things, The Material Culture of Everyday Life
Date: 2000
Author: Judy Attfield
Details: What do things mean? What does the life of everyday objects after the check-out reveal about people and their material worlds? Has the quest for the real thing become so important because the high tech world of total virtuality threatens to engulf us?
Media: Publication
Credit: bloomsbury.com/wild-things
Description: The most influential sources in my research were several studies of Daniel Miller and Judy Attfield, which offer in depth analysis of material culture.
Reference: FABIAN017
Title: Survey Objects
Date: 2020
Author: Veronika Fabian
Details: Large format print
Media: Image
Credit: Courtesy of the artist
Description: My latest project is revolving around people’s artefacts. In this project ‘You, me and your stuff’ I am investigating the role of artefacts as signifiers of identity and as a potential way through that value can be created and expressed. I conducted a survey asking individuals to name their most essential possessions and condensed the outcome of the survey into a series of necklaces, analysing and reflecting on our material culture.
Reference: FABIAN018
Title: Half Round Hand File
Date: NA
Author: Mercer Industries
Details: Rounded on one side, flat on the other. Ideal for rounding out holes; can be used on concave, convex, or flat surfaces and leaves a smooth finish. These files are most commonly used to deburr or remove material from the inside surfaces of cylindrical workpieces or to cut half round grooves. Mercer files have a multitude of styles and uses from sharpening, stock removal and removing burrs.
Media: Metal tool
Credit: mercerindustries.com/half-round-files
Description: As I am a maker, I use a wide variety of tools and machines that have equal importance regarding the end results, let it be a hydraulic press, my rolling mill, a doming punch or a hammer. If I have to choose just one, then it would be my half round hand file, sooner or later I’m using it in my process on most of my pieces.