Aotearoa Exchange details - Aotearoa New Zealand Jewellery

The Aotearoa Exchange collaboration was performed on Friday, 6 March 2026, as a live intervention during SCHMUCKmuenchen 2026 at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. Led by Mia Straka, Jessica Winchcombe, Grace Yu Piper, Hilda Gascard, Lisa van Hulst, Amelia Rothwell, and Peter Deckers, the event brought the spirit of Aotearoa New Zealand’s contemporary jewellery community into one of Europe’s most significant cultural institutions.

For its centenary, the Pinakothek selected Aotearoa Exchange to represent New Zealand jewellery through the Handshake Project. Staged in the museum’s vast entrance hall, the live educational school project occupied the three floors circling the auditorium and formed part of a programme featuring more than forty international jewellery schools.

The Handshake alumni presentation was choreographed alongside other international student groups. All six performers wore capes designed by Jessica Winchcombe. Jewellery by twenty Handshake artists—selected collectively by the Aotearoa Exchange collaboration and curated onto the capes by Lisa van Hulst and Grace Yu Piper—appeared across the moving capes. Mia Straka’s long‑white‑cloud headpieces introduced a second visual element, their slow, hovering motion encircled by the equally deliberate movement of the jewellery‑laden capes.

The jewellery on the capes invited close, intimate engagement that departed from static conventional displays. Multiple postcards featuring each artist’s work—each with a QR link to the portfolio pages—were given out to curious visitors, carrying the artworks and artists forward beyond the performance.

Supported by Creative New Zealand, Makers 101, and the artists, the project upheld Handshake’s peer‑led model, raised alumni profiles, connected New Zealand makers to international audiences, and created a living archive of meaningful exchange and visibility.

@creativenz