Johanna Zellmer
About Johanna Zellmer
During my 23 years of teaching contemporary jewellery at university level, I have become ever more curious about the affective nature of jewellery and the increasing standardisation of life and identity production in society. I am passionate about craft education which advocates material experimentation, gifting and exchange, collaboration and public interaction. Informed by science and multidisciplinary in nature, my own practice draws on the potential of jewellery objects as a medium of socio-political knowledge and instruments of identity politics. I consider jewellery’s capacity for defiance as a tactile and haptic medium of embodied knowledge and consider adornment as a statement of politics and humanity.
My research operates at the intersection of ethics, science, biopolitics, the application of technology and contemporary jewellery. I posit the experience of wearing colliers primarily made from DNA sequencing instruments, used for the administrative enhancement of life, as a resistance to the biopolitical standardisation of life and self. With a view to the ethical challenges of biotechnology, the affective experience of my work raises questions about standardised social and cultural practices and the resulting hierarchies, separations, and power relationships in Aotearoa and beyond.
I hold a PhD in Fine Arts from Toi Rauwhārangi, Massey University, New Zealand and joined HDK-Valand in August 2025. Born in Germany, I initially completed a goldsmith’s apprenticeship in Frankfurt, followed by a Master of Arts (VA) in metalsmithing at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. From 2000-2022 I held the positions of Principal Lecturer, Postgraduate Coordinator and Artist-in-Residence Coordinator at the Dunedin School of Art in Aotearoa, New Zealand.