Today, she is honoured to call herself a Greenlandic jewellery designer.

A “collector”, she calls herself. Wherever she goes, jewellery designer Karen Fly picks up things; everything from cod roe and bladderwrack to precious stones. In peep boxes, boxes and bowls in her workshop, she organises the artefacts, which are found in her own garden, in the Vejle area and in more distant destinations such as Greece and Brazil.

However, the majority of the findings are from Nuuk and Ilulissat. Greenland is an important part of both her own history and that of her jewellery. But it wasn’t always like this.

Karen Fly explains this when Formkraft meets her at RUMMET gallery at Dina Vejling in Odense. Until 31 August, you can see her jewellery in the exhibition ‘Strandfund og Sære Former’. On the walls of the exhibition room are photographs of the peep boxes, boxes and bowls from her workshop with the items neatly organised by shape and colour.

Formkraft caught up with Karen Fly to talk about how jewellery carries our stories and turns them out into the world. Stories about who we are, where we belong and where we stand in life.

For Karen Fly, there is one story in particular that has influenced her artistic endeavours. That is when she decided as an adult to seek out her Greenlandic origins.

A distorted image of Greenland

Karen Fly grew up in Kalundborg. Her father is from Denmark and her mother, who came to Denmark in the fifties, is from Greenland. As a child, she accompanied her mother when she met with other Greenlandic women to open parcels from their relatives in Greenland. But for Karen Fly, Greenland was still somewhat distant. She had never been there and didn’t speak the language.

‘I have been confronted several times with my Greenlandic heritage, both good and bad,” says Karen Fly, referring to the prejudices people may have about Greenland and people from there. Prejudices that have been imposed on her and that she herself has been shaped by. For the first part of her life, she therefore held Greenland “out in the open’, as she says.

But as an adult, the idea of travelling to Greenland became compelling to her. She wanted to become better acquainted with her origins and see Greenland with her own eyes.

In 2007, Karen Fly received the Biennale Prize, and in connection with this she was to organise an exhibition. Then the time was right. Her research for the exhibition was to take place in Greenland.

Before she left, she made a jewellery series with distorted maps of Greenland to give shape to the ideas she had about Greenland. Because she knew that travelling would change something. The preconceptions would be replaced with experiences.

‘Even though I felt foreign, I also felt at home,‘ says Karen Fly about the three-week journey that took her to Nuuk, Ilulissat and Sisimiut. After returning home, something fell into place: She wasn’t just Danish. She was also Greenlandic.

Since then, Greenland has been part of her own history and that of her jewellery.

Greenlandic jewellery designer

When Karen Fly describes her educational path, it starts with a story about freeing herself from a certain idea of what jewellery can and should be.

‘I didn’t know that you could decide what jewellery should look like. That it didn’t have to be like the ones in the shop,’ she says.

The liberation started at Engelsholm Højskole. She then went on to work at various jewellers, and then she entered the Institute of Precious Metals, from which she graduated in 2006.

In the programme, they had to constantly ask themselves what they wanted to do with what they were doing. At one point, she was told that what she was doing was ‘nostalgia nonsense’. Of course, it was hard to be met with scepticism, but it also taught her to ask herself what kind of story the jewellery was supposed to tell.

Her Greenlandic heritage has probably always had an impact on her artistic expression, even if it wasn’t conscious, Karen Fly reflects. Rarely as a direct reference, more often as an undercurrent, explains the jewellery designer, who has ‘worked with very pure shapes that reflect a physicality,’ such as the circle and the oval.

When she first presented her jewellery in Greenland, the way she had put together oval shapes was read as a reference to the ulu, the Greenlandic woman’s knife. It was an eye-opener for the Danish-raised – and Danish-educated – jewellery designer that her production was read that way: She was a representative:

‘I am actually a Greenlandic jewellery designer. I’m very honoured by that and I try to live up to it.’

Jewellery for life’s crossroads

On her first trip to Greenland, Karen Fly collected a variety of materials; everything from whalebone to driftwood to a plastic strawberry she found on the beach. Some became exhibits, others found their way onto a unique brooch.

For one of the pieces of jewellery on display at ‘Strandfund og Sære Former’, Karen Fly has also used Greenlandic materials, namely bone beads. The jewellery, which Karen Fly calls a “pocket object”, resembles both a prayer wreath and is slightly amulet-like. That’s how a lot of jewellery comes into our lives, as amulets. As protection, manifestation or celebration, which is why they often have so much meaning for us.

‘When a person chooses such a big, crazy piece of jewellery,‘ says Karen Fly, referring to the often very sculptural, perhaps even loud jewellery she makes, ‘it’s not for fun. It’s because they really mean it and think: ‘This is who I am!’

In her shop, Karen Fly meets many of the people for whom her jewellery becomes part of their story. Many of them are at a crossroads in their lives. Something has been turned upside down, ended or is about to begin.

‘I think it’s a privilege to create jewellery for someone who is on their way. Someone who has finished their education, is going through a divorce or is getting older. People who are struggling with or have survived illness,’ says Karen Fly.

Don’t overthink it

In the latest season of the Danish drama series Borgen, the character Emmy Rasmussen (played by Nivi Pedersen) wears a medallion by Karen Fly. The jewellery plays an important role as it reveals that the Greenlandic official has a relationship with the Danish Arctic ambassador.

The jewellery is also part of the ‘Strandfund’ series, which features a shell-like figure. The overall look of the jewellery series came to Karen Fly in a roundabout way. It started with a sketch:

‘I thought, this is going to be so adorable. But when I made it, it was anything but elegant. But it was good. It just wasn’t going to be used for what I thought,’ she says. The moulded shells were cut into pieces and reassembled in different formations.

This is typical of Karen Fly’s working method: Shapes are temporary. Jewellery is melted down and put together in new ways. When she is about to discard something, she can’t bring herself to do it anyway. So it sits in a bowl for a while until she picks it up again. With the materials in hand, she experiments and finds new expressions.

This also applies to the rings from the ‘Strange Shapes’ series. Like small finger ring sculptures, they stand in a row on a blue-grey exhibition module in the RUMMET gallery. One of the rings has saw marks in the silver.

‘If you looked at them with a jeweller’s eye, you would probably say that I could have worked a little more on this particular backside. But I think it’s a quality that the back is as ‘sloppy’ as it is,’ says Karen Fly with a small laugh.

In her eyes, being a Greenlandic jewellery designer also means freeing yourself from a seriousness:

‘It can be a little spontaneous, and it can be a little light. There has to be life, there has to be joy, and it shouldn’t be overthought.’

Theme: Diversity versus Standard

Through craft and design, we can stage ourselves and create the identity we want. What stories do contemporary artisans and designers have to tell?

In the coming months, we’ll be looking at both the many stories that crafts help tell and the standardised design solutions that are designed to include everyone. Alongside the personal desire to express one’s own identity and stand out from the crowd, there is a societal need to create universal design that can include everyone regardless of physical and mental limitations.

Formkraft delves into contemporary crafts and design through the lens of diversity.

Stay tuned for ongoing releases.

Further reading