June 25–October 30, 2022
Iris Eichenberg: Where Words Fail is now on view at the Museum of Craft and Design through October 30, 2022. This exhibition is the first mid-career survey of German artist Iris Eichenberg whose work addresses relevant issues such as identity, gender, and Heimat—a German word denoting the personal happiness and inner peace found upon reaching a safe haven.
Having lived in Germany, the Netherlands, and now the United States, artist and educator Iris Eichenberg brings a critical international perspective to her jewelry and metalwork. Guest curated by Davira S. Taragin, Where Words Fail is divided into four themed sections: Place, Self, Place & Self, and Community, each pulling from works across the artist’s career, including new work, jewelry, objects, and installations.
As the section titles suggest, Eichenberg’s practice is guided by her unique multicultural perspective as well as a relentless interrogation of materiality in order to identify the craft process and combination of materials that best suit the idea at hand. Unlike other artists who have lived in multiple European capitals and choose to inject aspects of diverse culture into their works, Eichenberg’s sojourn in America has made her increasingly aware of her “Germanness.” However, this response to her heritage has always been complicated by a sense of guilt and responsibility for a past with deep cultural and historical implications. This is seen in artworks such as Eichenberg’s poignant “Heimat” series, which celebrates the Germany of her grandmothers. Patchwork-quilt fields bordered by forests, the ancestral timber farmhouse filled with warm, welcoming evidence of hard-working women, and old family photographs provide recurring motifs for her works that range in scale.
In today’s world with its outcry for social justice, Eichenberg’s work is exceptionally relevant, embracing timely topics such as gender and queer identity, the search for a safe welcoming haven, and reality. As an emigrant and queer artist, Eichenberg defines herself in each of the unfamiliar environments she inhabits through ambiguous terms, relying on the sensorial language that is an outgrowth of the materials and processes she employs. Over the past twenty years, the artist increasingly has turned to more explicit images of women’s sexual organs. While she has always employed banal forms, some of her more recent work introduces a new level of intense, albeit poetic physicality, which assumes even greater sensuality. This is present in works such as Finger (2013), a wall-mounted grouping of elongated polymer digits, that celebrates touch as well as her queer identity.
Guest Curator Davira S. Taragin states, “Over the past quarter-century, as an educator and prolific artist who lectures and conducts workshops worldwide, Eichenberg has been instrumental in molding and shaping art jewelry today. This exhibition will, hopefully, mark the beginning of much-needed scholarship on this seminal figure within late twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.”
Assembled for the first time for West Coast audiences from international private and public collections and Eichenberg’s extensive archive, Iris Eichenberg: Where Words Fail presents forty works that demonstrate Eichenberg’s examination of self, including the impact of place and community.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with essays by curator Davira S. Taragin and art historian Benjamin Lignel. Learn more about Iris Eichenberg: Where Words Fail at sfmcd.org.
Iris Eichenberg: Where Words Fail is made possible, in part, by the Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant from Art Jewelry Forum. The exhibition is generously supported by Goethe-Institut San Francisco, the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Barbara Waldman, and Rodney Turner and Ken Thongcharoen. The Museum of Craft and Design’s exhibitions and programs are generously supported by Grants for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Hunter Douglas and Dorothy Saxe.
