Liesbet Bussche

Liesbet Bussche (1980, Belgium) is an Amsterdam-based visual artist known for her public installations, objects, printed matter and occasionally wearable jewellery in which she intertwines archetypal jewellery and urban elements. She studied at the Jewellery department of Gerrit Rietveld Academie (BDes, 2009, The Netherlands) and St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp (BFA, 2007 & MFA, 2016, Belgium). She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Arts at Hasselt University and PXL School of Arts, Hasselt, Belgium.

In her PhD, Liesbet Bussche unravels what it means to look, walk and work in public spaces as a jewellery designer. She researches the relationship between jewellery and the city by exploring resemblances or oppositions of both contexts from material, functional and symbolic viewpoints. Two newly developed methodologies contribute to a phenomenology of public space with an emphasis on its tangible aspects. Jewelism, or the borrowing method, directly and indirectly integrates aspects from the canon of jewellery, such as traditional jewellery types or features, into a new context. The other key method is a practice of noticing from a jewellery perspective where Bussche zooms in on seemingly insignificant items in public space. A minutiae-oriented practice of noticing paired with the method of borrowing results in a multifaceted artistic practice that includes observing, walking, writing and making, producing non-hierarchical outcomes such as photographs, texts, objects, jewellery and public installations.

Liesbet Bussche’s research is funded by the Special Research Fund (BOF) of Hasselt University (BOF20DOC01).
www.liesbetbussche.com