Marijke De Cock presents new work at Milan Design Week
Visual artist and jewellery designer Marijke De Cock once again reaches an important milestone in her artistic journey. After a year of intensive research, she presents new work internationally at Alcova Milano, as part of Milan Design Week, from April 20 to 26, 2026.
After her presentation as part of the group exhibition Meet Me in the Middle at St. Vincents in Antwerp, Marijke De Cock’s work has been selected for Alcova Milan, where it will be shown to an international audience of curators, collectors, and designers. This confirms De Cock’s position within a contemporary practice that deliberately blurs the boundaries between jewelry, sculpture, design, and architecture.
Marijke De Cock has worked for many years as a designer within the team of Dries Van Noten, where she specialises, among other things, in designing and creating exceptional jewellery and embellishments. She uses traditional embroidery techniques, each with a rich history.
For her personal work, she removes these embroidery techniques from their service-oriented role and transforms them into autonomous pieces. At the same time, she allows herself a personal mode of expression, in which she can explore and develop her own artistic voice, connecting her passion for creating with her sensitivities and her continuous search for exceptional beauty.
All of this comes together in a series of characteristic, abstract, intuitive wall sculptures that, adorned with beads, above all celebrate the desire to create, using a material that is thousands of years old and has motivated us since childhood to make jewellery.
In her new work, De Cock starts from familiar motifs and principles from her earlier practice, which she revisits and expands, with an explicit focus on form, material, and technique. The result is a versatile body of work in which jewellery no longer adorns the body, but the space itself.
Line remains central. As the main protagonist, it moves freely through space: wandering, dancing, and playful. It evokes the spontaneity of a doodle, yet is always supported by great technical mastery and often traditional craftsmanship. The lines appear against walls, float between floor and ceiling, and sometimes enter into dialogue with dense constellations of fine beads. In this way, the work transforms architecture into an enchanting, almost intimate environment.
The bead as an autonomous object
Continuing her search for a sculptural reinterpretation of her language, Marijke De Cock continues to join hands with architect Rodriguez Debal, her partner, to create three-dimensional oak forms adorned with brass and black glass beads.
A striking evolution within this new oeuvre is the increase in scale of the beads. In collaboration with a glassblower, De Cock enlarged the beads into transparent, sculptural elements. The beads, deliberately numerous, seem to overgrow the forms; partly embroidered, partly hammered directly onto the wood. The classical techniques of the beadwork and the echoes of haute couture are thus again revisited and appropriated, although in an even more radical sense. Conceived as volumes and with the European oak as their main support, the pieces challenge and enhance the original craft while alluding to almost primitive sculptures and ornaments.
In doing so, she questions what a bead is — or can be. Although they are still strung into strands, they gain a new autonomy: they lift lines, make constructions possible, and even form the legs of sculptural tables and racks. The transparency of the glass reveals the underlying construction. The pieces, designed as volumes and with European oak as the main support, challenge and reinforce the original craft, while referring to almost primitive sculptures and ornaments.
Light plays an essential role in De Cock’s work. Shadows double lines, colors shift, and materials — glass, wood, textile — come to life. Sometimes these shadows are tangible and present, sometimes fleeting and barely visible. Light anchors the work in the moment, in a constantly changing experience.
Practical information
ALCOVA / BAGGIO MILITARY HOSPITAL COMPLEX
20.04.26 – 26.04.26
CASA DELLE SUORE C8
Press preview
Sunday April 19 / 9AM - 3:30 PM
Via Giovanni Labus, 15, 20147 Milan, Italy
More info: https://marijkedecock.be
Images (download here - for Belgian press under embargo untill April 19th)
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