the earring show 2024
earrings: craft and culture
The Earring Show serves as a unique space that presents earrings as art, culture and a snapshot of contemporary high-level craftsmanship. Over the past 7000 years, earrings have acted as a window into cultural practices. At times, earrings have been used to introduce new norms into culture, at other times, culture has been expressed through earrings. The exhibition recognizes the importance of earrings throughout history in their various roles, from adornment and status markers, to protest and cultural statements.
This year, the exhibition sees over 200 handmade earring submissions from around the world, made from an extensive variety of mediums. These earrings are never neutral; they express a passion for art, design, technique, a societal concern, a cultural statement, or simply the physical expression of the artist’s craft. The artwork often relays a story that speaks to a part of the makers’ identity. Through the exhibition, these unique pieces and their stories have the potential to become a part of the wearers’ own story. This reflects one of the goals of the Show – to create shared experiences around craft between makers and wearers.
The Earring Show began as a one-day local event, and over the past 11 years, it has grown in its scope, meaning and representation – while always acting as a contemporary reflection of craft and culture. Today, The Earring Show is a hybrid event, displaying earring submissions both at the CCBC gallery in Vancouver and online CCBC Shop.
2024 winning artists
2024 winner
Kurds: one of the largest stateless ethnic groups globally. What is it like to belong to a nation without a homeland? Viyan, a Kurdish artist born in Turkey and now based in Canada, seeks an answer to this question through her ?The Heavy Presence of Absence? earrings.
Hand-fabricated in sterling silver and featuring freshwater pearls, this asymmetrical pair of earrings invites dialogue about the question of identity, connection to land (or lack thereof), cultural displacement, and the preservation of endangered languages.
Whereas one of the earrings displays perfect alignment and order, in the other earring the order is lost as the components of identity have been displaced, leaving behind a frame weighted by their absence. The absence ?of sovereignty, a freely spoken mother tongue, and a sense of belonging? forms a heavy presence, causing the frame to hang downward.
Through her exploration of this theme, Viyan seeks to reclaim her Kurdish identity in response to historical marginalization.
The prize for this category is generously sponsored by
Lacy West
Ye-jee Lee is working with the press technique using collected metal dies from the different counties.
Main idea of her work is pressing leather or metal, using useless retro metal molds in a different way of typical use. She used to think that shaping materials using a press was done in the industrial process or that it was suitable for only manufacturing the uniform and boring goods. However, the more she experiments it the more she could find out different ways to use it for creation. She tried to do away with stereotypes of method of the press using dies and discover hidden creativity of the machine that only it can be developed through her own work.
Materials that are printed using a die with a press will acquire a structure and condition suitable to be worked into ornaments. The resulting material is light and economical because its hollowness reduces the weight and amount of the materials required. In addition, flexible materials such as leather, metal mesh, thin plates, and thin lines also offer durability. Embracing these advantages, she intended to elicit a partial differentiation in texture in the midst of the rhythmic movement and uniformity.
The prize for this category is thoughtfully sponsored by
Barbara Cohen Design
2024 winner
2024 winner
The body of work she is presenting here is BIOPHILIA and it explores our relationship with nature. According to a theory of the biologist E. O. Wilson, we humans have an innate and genetically determined affinity with the natural world and it’s clear that spending time in nature improves our mental and spiritual health.
By creating this biomorphic series, soaked with natural colours and textures, her intention is to engage people to interact with the pieces and acknowledge the emotional impact that follows, so they are able to reconnect with what is naturally a part of us all. NATURE. It is a very stimulating collection that invites us to redefine our bond with nature so we can nourish our body and mind.
The earrings have been made though a meticulous handwork with silicone, pigments and cotton to resemble little flowers, petals or moss. They can be quite deceiving since they look like corals, and appear hard and rigid, but quite on the contrary they are flexible, light and really tactile.
The prize for this category is happily sponsored by
CCBC Online Shop & Gallery
artwork categories
Artists who submit their artwork to The Earring Show can do so under one of 3 categories: One-Of-A-Kind, Limited Edition and Emerging Artists.
One-Of-A-Kind pieces are just that – one-of-a-kind. They are unique earrings that are neither mass produced nor produced in a limited run. These earrings have a special combination of characteristics, materials and craftsmanship that make them irreproducible.
The One of Kind Prize
Limited Edition earrings are pieces produced in limited runs that demand careful and skilled craftsmanship for consistency. While pieces in this category can have multiples reproduced, there are still slight variations among them, due to the properties of the materials (e.g., variations in gemstones, for example), design decisions from the artist (e.g., variations in colour with dyed materials) as well as the handmade nature of the artwork.
Emerging Artists can apply as they go through the early stages of their making career. The Earring Show aims to provide a space for students, early graduates or self-taught makers that have recently started out.