Resident from September 2, 2026, until November 30, 2026
Felicia Mülbaier (1988, Speyer) is a German jewellery designer and visual artist. She has worked for over ten years with gemstones and researches how hard and sustainable material can be transferred into something extremely fragile. Especially dust plays an important part in this. She collects and processes materials including dust of lapis lazuli, ruby, tiger’s eye, milk opal and stoned wood, but also city dust or dust from church basements. For her, dust is both a sign of decay and a material that can make something new. Her work moves between jewellery, object, drawing and installation and question material, time, transience and the position of contemporary jewellery.
During her residency at DIVA museum, Mülbaier researchers the meaning of dust in a museal context. She looks at how dust collects itself on objects, why it is removed and what this action says about care, protection and transience. During conversations with the curators of DIVA museum, she wants to establish new creation which refer to historical tobacco tins and chests from the collection, where dust is not rejected but is a meaningful part of the object.
Felicia Mülbaier lives and works in Heidelberg. From 2011 until 2015 she studied Applied Art and Design at the Hochschule Düsseldorf. Afterwards, she received a Master of Fine Arts in Gemstones and Jewellery at the Hochschule Trier, Campus Idar-Oberstein.
Her work has been awarded numerous times. In 2019 she received the Justus Brinckmann Preis and a Förderpreis of the Hochschule Trier for her final-year project. In 2020 she received the Förderpreis für das Junge Kunsthandwerk of Baden-Württemberg. Furthermore, in 2022 she received the Bayerischer Staatspreis for her brooches Physis and Faltenwurf in lapis lazuli and gold. She also received the Staatspreis Gestaltung Kunst Handwerk Baden-Württemberg in 2024.
