Body Objects is the first comprehensive monograph on Nina von Albertini’s sculptural jewelry which she began making in the late 1970s after becoming a silversmith and moving from Switzerland to Florence and New York. While the clean shapes of von Albertini’s often large-scale silver objects are minimalist and clean cut, their design is streamlined to the body, facilitating both modern comfort and feminist confidence.
The formal language and conceptual underpinnings of von Albertini’s jewelry resonate with Minimalism and New Wave while also drawing inspiration from the powerful simplicity of the ancient and tribal jewelry that she continued to study while immersed in the vibrant cultural underground of New York’s early 1980s where music, fashion, and art crosspollinated each other in artist-run spaces, night-clubs and on the streets.
The publication contains an introduction by curator Giorgia von Albertini, a faksimile of a text by Bice Curiger and a conversation between artist Nina von Albertini and art historian Jacqueline Burckhardt. The book
is richly illustrated with photography by Mathias Aeberli, Bruno Bänziger, Paolo Buggiani, Daniel Jouanneau, Rocco Mancino, Adrien Panaro, and Tanja Stäheli. The historical photography is complemented with a newly commissioned insert by the British photographer Jet Swan whose work moves between the parameters of documentary and classical portraiture, as well as archival materials and personal memorabilia of von Albertini’s friendships with other artists and thinkers.
