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Yevgeniya Kaganovich Headshot

Yevgeniya Kaganovich

  • Professor, Jewelry & Metalsmithing
  • Area Head, Jewelry & Metalsmithing

Education

  • MFA, Metal, State University of New York-New Paltz, 2002
  • BFA, Metal/Jewelry, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1998

Biography

Yevgeniya Kaganovich is a Belarus-born, Milwaukee-based artist whose hybrid practice spans durational projects, wearable objects, sculpture, and installation. She holds an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz and a BFA in Metal/Jewelry from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Since beginning her professional career in 1992, Kaganovich has exhibited nationally and internationally, receiving numerous awards and extensive publications.

Her creative research explores materiality, transformation, and the relationships between body, object, and space. Working through the lens of craft, she investigates interconnectedness and environmental awareness while merging traditional craft precision with conceptual inquiry. Her practice often involves the transformation of found, discarded, or renewable materials into new substances and visual languages, emphasizing both the poetic and physical potential of matter.

A professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts since 2002, Kaganovich leads the Jewelry and Metalsmithing Area and actively contributes to Art & Design graduate and undergraduate programs. Previously, she taught at Chicago State University and Lillstreet Studios and worked professionally as a Designer/Goldsmith at Peggie Robinson Designs in Evanston, Illinois. Deeply committed to education, collaboration, and contemporary craft discourse, she has organized symposia, panels, and curatorial projects that build cross-disciplinary dialogue and advance the field.

At the core of her artistic vision lies a belief in the transformative capacity of materials—their ability to express human connection, ecological entanglement, and temporal change. Resent projects such as grow, divergent fates, and slow growing in the time of trees exemplify this approach.

grow is a series of durational installations in public spaces throughout Milwaukee and beyond, featuring plant-like forms made out of repurposed plastic bags. The work stages a speculative ecological evolution spurred by human activity, transforming synthetic waste into seemingly organic, self-propagating growth and inviting reflection on craft, control, and environmental reuse.

divergent fates considers sustainability and material agency through the imagined lives of trees, paper, and chairs. Through speculative acts of remembering, intuiting, diverging, reversing, transmutating, and reuniting, the project reframes consumption and regeneration from the perspective of the objects themselves.

In collaboration with Charles, Hall, and Moline, slow growing in the time of trees cultivates an interdisciplinary exchange between art, ecology, and biology. This ongoing project explores the interdependence between trees, mushrooms, and humans through both visible growth and invisible networks, using natural and reclaimed materials to activate contemplative, durational spaces.

Across her work, Yevgeniya Kaganovich bridges craft and concept, foregrounding material transformation as a way to imagine more connected, sustainable, and perceptive forms of human existence.

Links

Recent & Selected Works

picture of fungi growing in the grass
grow, durational installation project, 2016, reused plastic bags, dimensions variable
paper sculpture resembling a cross section of a tree trunk
paper remembering tree: log, 2019, reused newspapers, wax, 10” x 10” x 21” tree intuiting chair: graft, 2019-present, poplar and aspen saplings, dimensions variable and changing with the growth of the trees and additional grafts.
wooden sculpture of a chair using basic square shapes that are all attached to each other getting smaller and smaller in fractals
tree intuiting chair: fractal, 2019, scrap wood, 66” x 45” x 45”
Picture of two chairs made out of tree branches positioned against two young trees
tree intuiting chair: graft, 2019-present, poplar and aspen saplings, dimensions variable and changing with the growth of the trees and additional grafts.
Two chairs, using close-growing tree trunks as the four legs, made out of branches. The closer of the two is growing mushrooms.
slow growing in the time of trees (with mycollective: Charles, Hall, Kaganovich, Moline), 2025, aspens, aspen and poplar branches, willow, straw, mulch, oyster mushroom cultures, wine cap mushroom cultures, dimensions variable and changing with the growth of trees and mushrooms.
A birch tree stump with many mushrooms sprouting out of the side
slow growing in the time of trees (with mycollective: Charles, Hall, Kaganovich, Moline), 2025, aspens, aspen and poplar branches, willow, straw, mulch, oyster mushroom cultures, wine cap mushroom cultures, dimensions variable and changing with the growth of trees and mushrooms.

Articles & Selected Papers

Gifford, Barbara, ed. Jewelry Stories: Highlights from the Collection 1947-2019, Yevgeniya Kaganovich, “Precious in Many Ways”, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuyttgart. 2021: 108-111 (assay on Kim Buck, Gerd Rothmann and Heather White van Stolk)

Artistic Exhibitions & Artwork

  • One and Three Collective, Romania Jewelry Week 2024, Assemblage National Jewelry Association, Bucharest, Romania (international), 2024
  • Artist in Residence, Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2019 – present

Awards

  • 2025-26 C21 Research Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for 21st Century Studies, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Project: slow networks
  • Maker Tutor Award, School of Art and Design, Wuhan Technology and Business University, Wuhan, China, 2018

Creative Works Published/Cited by Others

  • lambert, matt. “Ravishing to Ravaging: Yevgeniya Kaganovich and a Case Toward Interpretation”. Crit Group. Metalsmith Magazine 42.3 2022: 72-74. (review and reproductions of work)
  • Stern, Nathaniel. Ecological Aesthetics: Artful Tactics for Humans, Nature, and Politics (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture), Dartmouth College. 2018: Yevgeniya Kaganovich, grow (2012 and ongoing) book cover, 18,178, 179-195, 197; as ethical-aesthetic practice, 189-190, 190b; experience and practice, as concept, 179-181, 180b, 181b; family background and camping activities, 190; Haggerty Museum of Art (2014) installation, 189; impact of, 193-194; INOVA (2015) installation,194; intentions of, 184; Lynden Sculpture Garden (2012-2016) installation, 183, 187, 188; placement of, 187-188; plastic grocery bags, transformation of, 181-185; public mood and, 184b, 195; as suspension rather than growth, 194-195, 194b; workshop process of creating, 185-187, 186, 190-193, 193.

Grants/Funded Research

  • Radical Jewelry Makeover Lending Library Collection (international) commissioned by RJM to make 3 pieces for the RJM Lending Library Launch in Spring 2027, 2025
  • Metal Museum Collection, Memphis, Tennessee, purchased 2024

Notable

  • The Jewelers Mutual Bench Jeweler Career Development Scholarship, The Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company, six $10,000 scholarships to be distributed over three years, received Spring 2024, $60,000
  • Kesslers Diamonds Student Showcase Scholarships and precious materials, $5,000 annually
  • Graduate Fellowship in Digital Craft Technologies (Steigleder Charitable Trust Graduate Fellowship), specifically to support students in the master level program with an emphasis in Digital Fabrication, Digital Craft Technologies, or a related field. This fellowship supports the student’s artistic and research development in Digital Fabrication, as well as their engagement with new technologies through teaching and facilities management. Secured support for a three year fellowship, received 2020, to be dispersed for the 2023-26 academic years. $75,000
  • Multiple Greater Milwaukee Foundation and other external grants received towards program development, totaling over $600,000