Three Boules brooches by Sheila Hicks

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The artist Sheila Hicks is currently showing new work of a more intimate scale at the Venice Biennale, in a collection of jewelry developed with Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, London. Hicks, who has created artworks using thread and fibres during her six-decade career as an artist, unveiled her Cosmic Jewelry during the opening of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia at the Monaco & Grand Canal Hotel in Venice, May 6, alongside work by other artists represented by Cipriani, including Giorgio Vigna and Michele Oka Doner.

“It is particularly meaningful to present Sheila Hicks as she returns to Venice with Cosmic Jewelry following her monumental installations at the 2017 Biennale,” explains gallery founder Elisabetta Cipriani, in an email. “Seeing her practice shift from that monumental scale to an intimate, wearable dimension brings a powerful sense of continuity, while opening an entirely new chapter in her work.” The Venice Biennale sees the Italian city become an open-air gallery for six months every two years, attracting an especially discerning audience.

Hicks is known for large-scale, textile-based works, which are held in museums and private collections around the world. In 2025, she held a major show at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, creating a dialog between her own work and ancient pieces from the museum collections. The jewelry pieces mark a new stage in her career, after a two-year process to consider how her immersive and monumental language could be translated into bodily adornment.

The jewelry art itself, is arresting. Bright threads are wrapped and layered around forms, capturing minerals and gemstones to create brooches and necklaces, created with Atelier L & L (Louise Zanartu and Louis Boudart). A branch of red coral is bound tightly to azure-blue silk thread and held in a frame, while scraps of metal hover over pink and red weaving, and turquoise peeps out from wrapped cotton and linen, the result of constant dialog between Hicks and the studio “to preserve the spontaneity of her gesture, while introducing the precision required for jewelry”.

The circular brooches are born of her larger-scale Boules, made up of threads wrapped around a core of textile which belonged to the artist’s friends or family, which she calls her ‘memory bundles’. The Minimes pendants are small studies made on a portable loom, like tiny, textile sketchbooks in which she explores colour, texture and structure. ”This was not a simple reduction in size,” continues Cipriani, “but a complete rethinking of proportion, balance, and movement.”

Born in Nebraska in 1934, Hicks has been based in Paris since 1964, and has also lived in Chile and Mexico? Her work draws inspiration from textile research in India, Morocco, Japan, South Africa and Scandinavia. “Sheila’s work has always been about tactility, intimacy, and the emotional resonance of materials. By bringing her practice into wearable form, these qualities are intensified, as the pieces are inhabited, carried, and experienced in movement,” explains Cipriani.

The starting point for many jewellers, are the materials and stones themselves. Here, the works begin with finer, texture and gesture, and stones “become essential to the identity of each piece,” according to Cipriani. “They act almost as anchors within the compositions, points of gravity that balance the softness and movement of the threads. At the same time, they bring a sense of permanence and geological time, which contrasts beautifully with the fluid, almost ephemeral quality of fibre.”

Cosmic Jewelry sits alongside other works in the showcase, as art jewelry by Giampaolo Babetto, Jacqueline Ryan and Satta Matturi seeks to explore the relationship between sculpture and the body. In a separate show in London, Cipriani is also preparing to present the final work made by the Greek artist Sophia Vari, before her death in 2023. Liens d’Amour was created while she was unwell, during which time she spoke to Cipriani about how her work was a source of strength. “Her presence remains an important part of the gallery’s programme and ongoing dialogue,” finishes Cipriani. “Together, these works create a dialogue around intimacy, scale, and the idea of sculpture as something that can be lived with, worn, carried, and experienced in a deeply personal way.”

Cosmic Jewelry is available to view this weekend until May 10, at the Monaco & Grand Canal Hotel in Venice, May 6.