THE AUTHOR

Marcela Muñoz is a Chilean artist and metal restorer, dedicated to creating and developing objects at KIMEN Studio, where she brings together diverse goldsmithing and textile techniques. After more than a decade in France working on mountmaking and conservation, Marcela settles back in Chile to work on her own collections born from her passion for beauty in nature, and artfulness in the elaboration of systems to create one of a kind pieces.

Daughter of a jeweler father and an embroiderer mother, at present, Marcela deposits her knowledge and learnings at KN Studio creating independently or in collaboration with other artists and designers.

SKILLS

Goldsmithing
Metal conservation
Loom weaving
Knitting
Crochet
Embroidery
Carpentry

ARTIST
STATEMENT

As a child, I was curious about my mother’s job as an embroiderer and my father as a jeweler. Both gave me the freedom to dream and sensitivity and ingenuity to face life, but above all, they taught me the value of a job well done.

My work combines sensitivity with a passion for creating systems that sustain, bind and link to my pieces everything I collect from the world with curiosity and fascination.

During the last years, I have been in contact with incredible objects, conceived by cultures of other times and places. For many years I worked creating mountmaking systems, a job that combines balance and gravity to create value for the exhibited object, for pieces presented in prestigious museums and exhibitions in Asia, Middle East, Europe, and the United States. At the same time, I worked in conservation, where I had the opportunity to hold in my hand’s objects of infinite beauty. By restoring, I understood the nobility that time gives to the objects and that trying to erase their history equals to stealing their soul. Conservation is a work that does not intend to hide the wounds of the past, but to celebrate the memory and intrinsic beauty that exists in each created piece.

After this long journey, I returned to Chile filled with lessons and with the necessary strength to create KIMEN, the brand, and studio that reflects my passion to create with my own hands, giving birth to objects that emerge from the delight for beauty in nature and the ingeniousness of systems to manufacture special one of a kind objects.