Gerrit Rietveld Academie Jewellery-Linking Bodies – Page 3 – Jewellery-Linking Bodies Department Gerrit Rietveld Academie

Forever Linked Farewell to Sonja Bäumel Head of Jewellery – Linking Bodies department

We thank and farewell Sonja Bäumel, beloved head of Jewellery—Linking Bodies since 2017, and teacher in the department since 2016.

Central to Sonja’s legacy is her rigorous commitment to the collective. Sonja is known school-wide for modelling her politics of care and reciprocity, and for practicing her belief that her students, like all people, are continuously shaped by and dependent on their surroundings.

As head, Sonja transformed the Rietveld jewellery department into a place that in practice and in name, linked bodies. Building on her belief that jewellery holds a special position in the extended field, she created a living-breathing example of a department as site for embodied education, attitude and jewellery thinking. Over eight years Sonja lovingly co-created a happy, healthy and close-knit department.

We know that Sonja’s presence over the years has been distinguished by her long-term collaborations, much like in her artistic practice. To that end, we’re heartened that Sonja’s departure doesn’t mark the end of the Rietveld relationship. She will continue her work on interdisciplinary projects with a focus on local communities with Sonia Kazovsky in 2026. Rooted in the Jewellery-Linking Bodies department, the project, like Sonja, keeps its eyes on the broader horizon.

Two days workshop- storytelling, object, and spatial practice with Natalia (Nika) Sorzano

Based in Rotterdam, Natalia (Nika) is a mixed media artist whose installations weave together sculpture, painting, performance, and video. Her work inquires into how relations unfold and affect subjectivity, focusing on the negotiation of belief systems and personal accounts. Looking beyond the human to more-than-human species, material, and mythic realms, she examines the symbols of everyday interaction—how they affect bodies, objects, and spaces while disguising underlying currents of violence, politics, and desire. She folds these observations into her material work to create realities through fantasy and concepts of the macabre.

Natalia holds an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute (2016). Her practice is deeply connected to her community and collaborative work; she is a co-founder of the facilitative platform GHOST and the queer artist-run space Tender Center Rotterdam. She is also a board member for Papaya Kuir, an activist organization supporting immigrant Latinx queer communities. Natalia currently works as an educator and researcher at the Willem de Kooning Academy and is a tutor for the MFA Monstrous Futurities at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

A short description of the workshops:

This two-day intensive workshop explores the intersection of storytelling, object, and spatial practice. Participants will translate narrative constructs into tangible, material environments, aiming to create immersive scenographic works. Students will collaboratively create a story and learn to shape it into a physical scenography, focusing on material choice, scale, and atmosphere through hands-on construction and group feedback.

Launching the new academic year with a workshop by Geo Wyex

Wave of No Parts (hello + introductions)

An invitation to meet, ground, make sound with performance nut and music practitioner Geo Wyex – group listening and movement exercises – Linking Bodies, clapping back, and holding hands with Pauline Oliveros, Mary Overlie, and June Jordan.

Bio:

Geo Wyex (b. 1984, New York City) is an artist and educator, based between Rotterdam, NL and New York City. Geo makes sound, performance, and poetry. His 2024 solo exhibition Nobody Wade Never Too Much at JOAN (Los Angeles) featured contributions and creative support from collaborators and technicians Constantina Zavitsanos, S*an D. Henry-Smith, Kamron Hazel, NDNMK Solutions, and Ghaith kween Qoutainy. Geo’s most recent record muck NO study STARS (2025), was recorded in New Orleans and Rotterdam, and released through Muck Studies Dept. – an imaginary city agency, who wades through low-lying waters, “looking for stars out of what stinks.” Muck Study looks to the conditions that ground and unground the possibility of a black and trans historical telling, taking up feminist methodologies of haptics and poetics — invoking dissonance and distortion — and investigating field/wave theory and unreliable narrative.