In her artwork, Julia Maria Künnap mainly focuses on traditional gem cutting and stone carving. For more than ten years, the artist has used natural stones in her artwork, polishing these into the pieces of jewellery. The conceptual core of Künnap’s artistic practice lies in the contradiction between the eternalness of a stone and the ephemerality of a moment – that is well expressed also at the current exposition.
“On a human level, we are all connected by living the same life, including everyday joys and worries, love and loneliness. Sometimes the joy emerges from good weather, a specific moment of time when the shadows of clouds are sliding above the ground, a slight gust of wind in the branches of a tree behind your window, a moment of lightness. When I succeed to include some of these moments of lightness in my artwork, then perhaps this will also touch other souls.”
/Julia Maria Künnap/
“Like a shaman or alchemist, Julia Maria Künnap appears to alter the natural state of materials, turning precious stones to liquid. In her hands, stone sag, melt, drip, or ripple, reducing rock crystal to a watery drip, causing obsidian to ripple endlessly, or melting onyx like chocolate. One might call her work with stone mischievous or clever, but it seems rather more tender and empathetic than that: She’s showing stone how to do something beyond its own nature, but something surprisingly within its will.”
/Felix Flury, Gallery SO, London/
Julia Maria Künnap is a freelance jewellery artist living and working in Tallinn. She has graduated from the department of jewellery art at the Estonian Academy of Arts (Professor Kadri Mälk, MA 2004, BA 2001) and taken additional courses in Stockholm and Firenze. Julia Maria Künnap has held personal exhibitions in Estonia, Italy, Taiwan, Thailand and USA. Her artworks have been exhibited in various galleries and museums in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Paris, Stockholm, Riga, Padova, Munich, Helsinki and elsewhere. Besides acknowledgements she has received in Estonia and abroad, Künnap;s artwork has been awarded with one of the most prestigious jewellery prize in Munich 2018 – Herbert Hoffmann Prize. Her artworks belong to the collections of the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and MAD Museum of Arts and Design New York. Künnap is a laureate of the ”Ela ja Sära” (”Live and Shine”) grant 2021 by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Sound design of the exhibition: composer Marc Marder (France).
Thanks to: Ann Virkus, Katrin and Rait Talvik, Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
Exhibitions in HOP gallery are supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Liviko Ltd.
