Eva van Kempen - Ready-to-bear

Eva van Kempen (1976) is an art jeweller. By adding precious metals, fresh water pearls and gemstones to discarded hospital materials, such as intravenous lines, injection needles and blood tubes, she transforms cold and clinical objects into valuable pieces of jewellery. From 8 September 2017, Van Kempen’s recent series of jewellery will be presented on busts made by various sculptures taken from the De Fundatie collection.


'Angled Slices', 2017. Choker, medical leads, silver and freshwater pearls on the bronze bust, ‘Portrait of Maria Lani’ by Charles Despiau, 1929.

Van Kempen created something of a stir in 2015 with her LifeLines jewellery line, made from safe recycled hospital waste. With this jewellery, she demonstrated the inherent exquisiteness and value of a range of medical equipment and implements. This came as a revelation to her when undergoing a series of intensive medical procedures in the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. Once recovered, Van Kempen felt the desire to work with hospital materials. It provided a conduit for coming to terms with certain events and accepting her own mortality. At the same time she presented an open invitation to reconsider these materials from an alternative viewpoint.
Decapeptyl necklace on Portrait of a Young Woman by Bé Thoden van Velzen; Neonatology necklace on a torso by Charlotte van Pallandt, 1930;
She decides chastity belt on Torso by Geert Marree, 1943.

Museum De Fundatie asked Eva van Kempen to make jewellery to be presented on busts created by various sculptors whose work has been purchased down the years. The artist has managed with this exhibition to ‘inject’ some sparkle underpinned by a sense of wryness into the often paradoxical themes of illness, life and death.

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