The visual arts scene in Luxembourg is home to a wide variety of actors and continues to grow in vibrancy. Its diversity makes it unique, reflecting the various places where the artists have trained, the mediums they have chosen to express themselves, the regions where they are active, and even the ways in which they have decided to show their work.

Looking outwards at other art scenes abroad— where they live, where they have studied, or where they have developed networks—Luxembourgish artists know how to ‘export’ themselves easily, helped by their multilingualism and the various connections they can rely on.

On the occasion of the Luxembourg Art Week (10-12/11), Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg is organising three days for visual arts professionals to promote exchanges and to make the Luxembourg art scene, its artists and actors, whether institutional or private, better known. By facilitating encounters between professionals during studio visits, portfolio reviews, exhibition visits and exchanges between professionals, Kultur | lx aims to stimulate dialogue between different art scenes in a convivial atmosphere, and create cross-border working habits.

For this fourth Focus on Visual Arts, Kultur | lx offers foreign professionals studio visits curated by Mirela Baciak, curator and director of Salzburger Kunstverein.

Finally, in addition to this curated programme, Kultur | lx is organising a round table on Friday 10 November from 2 to 3 p.m. on the site of the Luxembourg Art Week, about L’artiste chercheur, un pléonasme ou une figure dans l’air du temps ? by Sandra Delacourt (moderation by France Clarinval) as well as a Pitch Presentation from 4 to 7 p.m. at Casino Display (mandatory registration, limited capacity).

Note: admission to Luxembourg Art Week is charged (€15 for adults, free for children and students).
Ticketing on site and online on the
Visit & Tickets Page.

Hisae Ikenaga’s exhibition Industrial-visceral, presented by Nosbaum Reding Gallery, officially opened on 15 September at the Saarländische Galerie in Berlin. The artist’s work is being shown in the German capital for the first time during a high point in the cultural calendar, Berlin Art Week.

One of the main contemporary art events in the city, Berlin Art Week has attracted both professionals and amateurs from across the world since it was founded in 2012. This is one of the reasons why Kultur | lx chose this period to offer professional art galleries in Luxembourg—through a call for applications—the opportunity to present a monograph or collective exhibition at the Saarländische Galerie, Europäisches Kunstforum e.V. from 13 to 17 September.

The exhibition was officially opened by Jean-Paul Senninger, Ambassador for Luxembourg in Berlin, Reinhold Kopp, Chairman of the Board of the Saarländische Galerie, Thorsten Bischoff, Plenipotentiary of Saarland to the Federal Government in Berlin, Valérie Quilez, International Director of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg and Alex Reding, Director of the Nosbaum Reding Galery, in the presence of Hisae Ikenaga.

Two rooms and two different atmospheres. The first part of the exhibition is a spacious open area that showcases the artist’s sculptures which combine artefacts and other creations displayed on shelves, echoing the functional design of the modern era. Recreating the atmosphere of a contemporary showroom that has taken a sidestep, the impeccable industrialised design of our muted interiors would appear to be contradicted by fragile handmade pieces that are carefully balanced, unique, accidentally organic shapes. The second, more cramped room, evokes a laboratory or industrial kitchen. The remains of food—such as tortillas and slices of bread and cheese made from ceramic—sit alongside what appear to be the anatomical specimens, all carefully placed in steel containers or test tubes, clinically clean. A good dose of surrealist humour underpins this incongruous combination of elements that remind us of what it was like to play with modelling clay as a child, yet now varnished and enhanced with an expensive glaze. At the back of the room, test pieces seem to have been preserved in formalin, as though a ceramics serial killer has decided to inventory earlier attempts and preserve them for the future. Full of black humour as it questions archaeological methods and interrogates our rational obession with classification, Hisae Ikenaga’s work is open and can be explored from several perspectives.

In addition to the exhibition, the artist also presented her work to the public on Saturday 16 September moderated by Hélène Doub (Head of Visual arts, Kultur | lx), drawing on the dynamic at play in this part of the city experiencing a surge of creativity. The Nosbaum Reding Gallery has also produced a special catalogue to accompany the exhibition which includes essays by Marianne Derrien and Laura Helena Würth, two art critics, one French, the other German.

This format, proposed for the first time by Kultur | lx in collaboration with the Ministry for Culture, the Luxembourg Embassy in Berlin, and the Saarländische Galerie in Berlin, aims to promote artists and stakeholders in the Luxembourg art scene in Germany and internationally through a network that is both commercial and institutional.

 

HISAE IKENAGA, Industrial-visceral
Saarländische Galerie – Europäisches Kunstforum e.V., Charlottenstraße 3, 10969 Berlin
U6 Kochstraße / Checkpointcharlie

13 September – 7 October 2023
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
During Berlin Art Week: Friday 12-9 p.m., Saturday 12 – 8 p.m., Tuesday 12-6 p.m.

Since its official inauguration on May 18 in the presence of H.R.H. the Grand Duchess, the Minister of Culture Sam Tanson, H.E. Michèle Pranchère-Tomassino, Ambassador of Luxembourg in Rome, and more than 200 professionals, the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is a resounding success with the public. Halfway through the Biennale, which closes on 26 November, the “Down to Earth” exhibition had attracted nearly 30,000 visitors by 30 August.

Starting from Luxembourg’s role in the development of space mining, the exhibition Down to Earth by Francelle Cane and Marija Marić, critically explores what goes on behind the scenes of the space industry and the media and scientific narratives on which its future development is based. Conceived as a Lunar laboratory – research spaces designed to test space robots in real life but also serving as media studios for the promotion of of the race to space – the exhibition in the Luxembourg pavilion draws on contributions from numerous researchers, artists and collaborators.

The exhibition has not only been very well received by the public, but also by the press:

Mine, all mine. The Moon has long inspired architects. Now curators Francelle Cane and Marija Marić image what would look like if human started mini nits resources” – Financial Times, May 20, 2023.

(…) architecture can be a force for emancipation and a stimulating intellectual field. The Luxembourg pavilion in Venice is proof of this.”, Tageblatt, May 20, 2023.

The curators want to launch a debate on the consequences of perceiving space as an economic area crossed by national borders. (…) For their exhibition, the curators will transport the moon to the Arsenale and reproduce it ‘down to earth’. (…) In this way, the Luxembourg contribution to the biennial is the simulation of a simulation“. – Bauwelt, 15 May 2023.

Upcoming events :

14 + 15.09 | Pavilion Days, Venice
During Pavilion Days, to be held on 14 and 15 September, curators Francelle Cane and Marija Marić will welcome professionals for a guided tour (by invitation), each day at 11.15am as part of a tour route through the heart of the Arsenale.

21.09 | “Down to Earth” conference, Luxembourg
For their first public lecture in Luxembourg, the two curators of the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, Francelle Cane and Marija Marić, present their research project and the exhibition “Down to Earth”.
Further information: luca.lu

The Down to Earth exhibition is open until 26 November.
www.venicebiennale.kulturlx.lu

Lët’z Arles in collaboration with the Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA) and with the support of the Ministry of Culture, is pleased to announce the creation of the Luxembourg Photography Award and the Luxembourg Photography Award mentorship.

Lët’z Arles is constantly adapting its support programmes for artists, in line with artistic needs and practices. After 7 years of generous commitment to the creative process, Lët’z Arles has renamed its support programme the Luxembourg Photography Award (LUPA).

This programme of support for artists is offered in two formats:
An exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles for the winner of the Luxembourg Photography Award.
The winner of this first LUPA is Daniel Wagener and his exhibition opus incertum, presented at the Chapelle de la Charité as part of the 54th Rencontres d’Arles, curated by Danielle Igniti from 3 July to 24 September 2023.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, anchoring the project over time and providing a complementary perspective to the works on display. The publication features a number of photographs to complement those in the exhibition, as well as a series of risographs echoing the artist’s own practices.

A mentorship-residency for the winner of the Luxembourg Photography Award mentorship – with the support of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg.
Rozafa Elshan benefited from a 3-month mentorship-residency in partnership with the Ecole nationale supérieure de la photographie d’Arles.
Between the end of January and the beginning of April, this artist development programme focused on the theme of ‘Printed Spaces’ and offered participants a full range of masterclasses, workshops and group work sessions, all under the guidance of Professor Gilles Saussier. The mentoring concluded with the presentation of an assessment of their work in the form of models and sketches of future projects.

Following a month of assembly, the Sale d’Armi of the Arsenale in Venice, which has hosted the Luxembourg pavilion of the art and architecture biennials since 2018, finally opened its doors to the public on the 20th of May. Down to Earth, the exhibition developed by architects, curators and researchers Francelle Cane and Marija Marić, has received an outstanding response from both the press and visitors.

The opening week of the Venice Architecture Biennale represents a special moment for the professionals who attend, between a family reunion and a giant symposium, drawing in all the profiles, emerging or confirmed, and all the trends in architectural research. The professional days are important for those who defend a project, both to expand their network and to attract media attention.

During this marathon, the two curators Francelle Cane and Marija Marić conducted a series of interviews with the national and international press, before officially inaugurating the Luxembourg pavilion on the 18th of May, in the presence of H.R.H. Grand Duchess Maria Teresa, Sam Tanson, Minister of Culture, H.E. Michèle Pranchère-Tomassini, Luxembourg’s Ambassador to Rome, and more than two hundred Luxembourg and foreign guests.

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A national pavilion focused on the issue of resources

Starting from Luxembourg’s role in the development of space mining, the exhibition Down to Earth by Francelle Cane and Marija Marić, critically explores what goes on behind the scenes of the space industry and the media and scientific narratives on which its future development is based. Conceived as a Lunar laboratory – research spaces designed to test space robots in real life but also serving as media studios for the promotion of of the race to space – the exhibition in the Luxembourg pavilion draws on contributions from numerous researchers, artists and collaborators.

The scenographic elements developed during the collective research process offer three ways of understanding the subject through a film, a workshop and a book. Armin Linke’s film Cosmic Market, made in collaboration with the Pavilion’s curators, shows the links between scientific research and the different interpretations of space legislation, between technological development and the creation of new markets, both on Earth and beyond. A collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and the Luxembourg Pavilion, the workshop “How to: mind the moon” takes as its starting point a reflection on five lunar materials, sketching out a new type of “materials library” in which humour is not absent. The book Staging the Moon, a stand-alone piece published by Spector Books (Leipzig; design: Studio OK-RM), contains critical essays by the two curators, as well as contributions by Armin Linke and photographer Ronni Campana.

Down to Earth thus presents in an immersive and inventive way the results of essential research into the question of resource exploitation, which fits perfectly with the theme of the Biennale’s international exhibition “Laboratory of the Future”, curated by Lesley Lokko. Rooted in the blind spots of official history, the international exhibition places architectural reflection under the sign of imagination, its main factor of change, and of ethics, which must guide us in our approach to the common space where we draw our resources.

This topic was at the heart of “(Re) penser les ressources“, a francophone discussion organised by the Belgian Pavilion in which the women curators participated on Saturday the 20th of May, alongside contributors and curators from the Belgian, Canadian and French pavilions.

Awards in line with the artistic direction

The jury of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, composed of Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli (president, Italy), Nora Akawi (Palestine), Thelma Golden (United States), Tau Tavengwa (Zimbabwe) and Izabela Wieczorek (Poland), determined a list of winners that perfectly reflected the key themes of the Biennale: “decolonization and decarbonization”.

The Golden Lion for the best national participation was awarded to Brazil for an exhibition based on research and “an architectural intervention centred on the philosophies and imaginaries of indigenous and black populations that considers the modalities of reparation”. A special mention as a national entry went to Great Britain for the curatorial concept and spatial setting “celebrating the power of everyday rituals as forms of resistance and spatial practices in diasporic communities”.

On the international side, the Golden Lion went to DAAR – Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal for “their longstanding political engagement with architectural and learning practices of decolonisation in Palestine and Europe”.

In addition, Demas Nwoko, a Nigerian-born artist, designer and architect, was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition. Demas Nwoko has been at the forefront of modern art in Nigeria. As an artist, he strives to incorporate contemporary techniques into architecture and scenography to highlight African subjects in much of his work. His work will be on display in the Stirling Pavilion in the Giardini.

For its first appointment as organiser and coordinator of the Luxembourg pavilion, Kultur | lx was able to rely on the experience of luca – Luxembourg Center for Architecture. In charge of the Luxembourg presence in Venice for both the Art and Architecture Biennials, Kultur | lx intends to further extend its contacts and capitalise upon the successful experience of this biennial.

Down to Earth, by Francelle Cane and Maria Marić can be seen until 26 November 2023, 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale, Sale d’Armi A, 1st floor.

Kultur | lx, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, the Embassy of Luxembourg in Berlin and the Saarländische Galerie – Berlin, launched a call for applications aimed at Luxembourg-based professional art galleries for the design of an monographic or collective exhibition of Luxembourg artists lasting four to six weeks between during Berlin Art Week.

By drawing on a network with both commercial and institutional reach, this initiative, coinciding with a key event in Berlin’s cultural calendar, aims to promote artists and players from the Luxembourg art scene on the German and international stage.

The jury chose the project Industrial-Visceral by the artist Hisae Ikenaga, proposed by the gallery Nosbaum & Reding, because it believes in the potential of the artist, who has not yet had a solo exhibition in Germany. The artist – whose sculptural work, at the crossroads of several techniques, questions our relationship to objects, their history, their manufacture and their function – deserves to be discovered on the Berlin scene where the series presented, already successfully exhibited in Luxembourg and Belgium, could meet the “cutting-edge” public of the Berlin Art Week.

Hisae Ikenaga is a multidisciplinary artist who has studied art theory and visual arts in cities such as Mexico City, Kyoto, Barcelona and Madrid. Based in Luxembourg, she has shown her work in various solo and group exhibitions around the world and has received several awards, including the LEAP20 Luxembourg Encouragement for Artists Prize in 2020 and first prize in the first OAI Art in Situ competition for her in situ project for the headquarters of the Ordre des Architectes et Ingénieurs Conseils du Luxembourg (OAI) in 2021.

 

About Saarländische Galerie

The Saarländische Galerie is an independent non-profit association. Capitalising on Saarland’s location in the centre of Europe, the Saarländische Galerie – Europäisches Kunstforum is involved in cross-border cultural exchanges with other European countries such as Luxembourg. The aim of the gallery is to provide a platform in Berlin for artists from Saarland and its partner regions to showcase their work on the German capital’s lively – and booming – art scene.
 

About Berlin Art Week

Berlin Art Week is a platform providing a springboard for extensive collaboration between the most important institutions in the Berlin art world. Once a year, it presents a diverse programme with over 50 partners ranging from museums to arts centres, fairs, private collections, project spaces and numerous galleries. The programme invites the public to discover ongoing developments in the world of contemporary art. Its audience is made up of many professionals as well as art experts and art lovers from Germany and around the world.

The Berlin Art Week will take place from 13 to 17 September 2023.

The Künstlerhaus Bethanien is organising a group exhibition from 30 September to 23 October (opening on 29 September, 7 PM) presenting the work of 5 of its residents: François Lemieux (Canada/Quebec), Lisa Kohl (Luxembourg), Nicole Rafiki (Norway), Yun-Pei Hsiung (Taiwan) and Thomas Schmahl (France).

Focus on the work of Lisa Kohl, laureate of the 2022 call for applications offered by Kultur | lx, in residency from 01 July to 31 December.

The work of Lisa Kohl (b. 1988 in Luxembourg) can be understood as a conglomerate of digital media, installations, field research, documentation, staging and narration. Her artistic excavations revolve around the ephemeral, the absent and the imaginary. Aesthetic phenomena of absence, migration and situatedness play a central role in her work. In the field of tension between material presence and actual events on the one hand, and the realm of the possible, the fictitious and the invisible on the other, she finds near-endless artistic possibilities to merge both instances into simulations.

The video THE GAME (Bihać | Bosnian-Croatian Border | 2022) highlights the struggles of migrants through the aesthetics of gaming. Escape routes are shown on a smartphone from the perspective of a young Afghan man. The device is reminiscent of a VR game console. In the voiceover, the protagonist can be heard describing the different forms of escape and pushbacks that he personally experienced. A subtle sense of menace and tension underpins his account.

The photo series BLINDSPOT (Bihać | Bosnian-Croatian Border | Calais | France | 2022) metaphorically embodies the presence of the absent and the visibility of the invisible. The elements it depicts, such as the shelter, the mihrab carpet and the body cast, symbolically allude to the notion of refuge and the appropriation of anonymous spaces of living and prayer. The sacral mood here refers to belief and hope in relation to identity and strangeness, intimacy and home(lessness).

The series HALIDOM (Canary Islands | Spain–North Africa | 2022) represents sainthood on an iconographic level – as a pictorial metaphor for life and death, presence and absence, limitation and expanse, height and abyss. Sculptural figures in barren areas and border zones become symbolic monuments and representatives of the unseen. The veil is synonymous with concealment, protection and camouflage. The relief and the folds of the cloth suggest notions of divinity, heroism and inviolability. This series confronts us with spaces of transition – an allegory for the longing for freedom and redemption.

The video installation ACROSS (2022), created during the artist’s stay at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, confronts us with brutalist window architecture and a view of a vast sky lined with dissolving clusters of clouds. Concrete and air these two materials could not be more different and yet here they form a harmonious entity that calls to mind countless images, from medieval Annunciations to window depictions in German Romanticism and famous film scenes. They all have one thing in common: the window serves (in various ways) as a threshold between this world and the hereafter that not only separates the two but also establishes a contact between them. The artwork was created in collaboration with the sound designer Sören Schenk.

EXHIBITION SPACES
Kottbusser Straße 10
10999 Berlin
Free admission
Tue – Sun: 2pm – 7pm 

 

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Organised on the initiative of Plan d’Est and Kultur | lx, the first meeting between visual arts professionals of the Greater Region took place on 8 September in Belval in the presence of some forty organisations and institutions of the Greater Region dedicated to the visual arts. The objective of this day was to better understand the diversity of the actors in the field of visual arts in the Greater Region and to evoke avenues for collaboration.

Plan d’Est, the visual arts cluster of the Grand Est, a professional association, Kultur | lx and the Région Grand Est imagined a light hearted social event where professionals from the visual arts domain could exchange and meet in an informal setting. Numerous organisations had come from France, in particular from Alsace and Lorraine, but also from Germany from Trier and Saarbrücken, as well as from Landau. The participants consisted mainly of art centres and associations, but also institutions that support the visual arts, such as the Région Grand Est and the Drac Lorraine, had come.

Some organisations had already had specific ideas for collaboration, such as the Mulhouse Biennial, which wanted to open its calls for applications to create a cross-border residency on the theme of the climate and was looking for European partners, or Accélérateur de particules, an association based in Strasbourg but operating in the Grand Est region, which proposes to organise the opening of artists’ studios on a cross-border scale. The Künstlerhaus of Saarbrücken proposed to the participants to create a cross-border residency between the different territories and reminded them that the Andrea Neumann art prize is a cross-border art prize.

A number of art schools in the Greater Region were represented, in particular ENSAD Nancy, which already has projects with Casino Luxembourg, and the Europäische Kunstakademie Trier. This was an opportunity for them to present their teaching and research areas, and to show their know-how, as ENSAD accompanied the group during the visit of the RESPIRE exhibition, curated by the art school in the framework of Esch2022. The Kunstakademie Trier has participated in numerous projects within the framework of Esch2022, including bus tours of contemporary art venues in the Greater Region. It also participates in the European Month of Photography (EMOP).

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In addition to Esch2022, which hosted the event and enabled the group to visit the exhibitions at the Möllerei and the Massenoire, Luxembourg was present through three organisations: the CNA and the Rotondes, which already have a fine cross-border arsenal, and the Reuter Bausch gallery, which wanted to discover new horizons and shed light on the artists it represents.

For Kultur | lx, this day was a first step towards nearby territories that constitute the first milestones of an international career for Luxembourg artists. The artistic emulation that reigns there and the numerous places dedicated to contemporary art, without forgetting the media that accompanies them, constitute undeniable assets on our doorstep. Kultur | lx will accompany these regional movements as part of its mission to support the development of careers and the dissemination of creations.

Continuing its series of Visual Arts “Repérages”, Kultur | lx hosted a series of meetings with Berlin professionals and actors in the visual arts field from 20 to 22 July 2022, on the fringes of the Berlin Biennale. The group started its journey with a visit to Lisa Kohl, a Luxembourg photographer and video artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien since 1 July.

Following a first Visual Arts Repérage hosted in Kassel in June, Kultur | lx focused its “Mobility, Research and Career Development” support scheme on the city of Berlin, offering support to artists who wished to explore this art scene or deepen existing relationships. During three days, artists and curators from Luxembourg were invited to meet with directors of residencies, gallery owners and curators present in Berlin. Six artists were able to benefit from this specific programme.

Residencies with variable sizes

The first meeting took place at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien with Christoph Tannert, director, and Valeria Schulte-Fischedick, curator and coordinator of the international residency programme. The Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH, Germany’s top artist residency (founded in 1974), has been located in a former Lichtfabrik near the Kottbussertor underground station in the heart of Kreuzberg since 2009. Since it was founded in the former Bethanien hospital, it has welcomed more than 950 artists in some thirty studios.

Lisa Kohl, winner of the residency programme at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien initiated by the Focuna and taken over by Kultur | lx in 2022, opened her studio to us where she was still getting her bearings. This 6-month programme will enable her to develop her project Shutdown dreams | Angels in fall, to show her work in a group exhibition which will be launched in mid-September, to participate in studio visits or open days, and to benefit from a critical article in Be Magazin, a newspaper which publishes critical essays on the work of the residents, commissioned by the Künstlerhaus Bethanien.

The group then had the opportunity to meet Isabelle Parkes, coordinator of the Callies International Residency Programme, a venue that opened in the Wedding district in 2020, initiated by an American artist living in Berlin. This second venue welcomes artists from all walks of life, with practices ranging from writing and performance to dance and music. Callies is open to unsolicited applications all year-round and offers great flexibility to aspiring residents.

Germany-Luxembourg hops

One of the highlights for our 6 participants was the meeting with Lidiya Anastasova, curator at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) and director of the NBK’s art library collection, a collection that can be borrowed by anyone, consisting of 4,000 original works, including Marina Abramović, Victor Vasarely or Thomas Schütte, which allows Berlin-based artists to benefit from regular commissions, notably in the context of screen printing editions. Lidiya had participated in the studio visits of the Visual Arts Focus in May 2022 and met a large number of Luxembourg cultural actors.

The six artists also visited their compatriots who had a current exhibition in Berlin. On 20 July, Catherine Lorent gave a talk at the Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin on the issue of gender in art in the context of her exhibition Relegation ~ via. Voice:over II. On 22 July, Eric Mangen launched a duo exhibition with the Ukrainian artist Artjom Chepovetskyy at the Jarmuschek + Partner gallery.

Finally, the Berlin Biennale, orchestrated this year by the artist Kader Attia (FR), provides the backdrop to these meetings. The 12th biennial takes place in contemporary art institutions and museums but also in informal places. Its title, Still present! invited us to consider individual and societal traumas from the perspective of Mending – that of objects and individuals, but also that of time and history. The exhibitions visited formed a coherent and rich whole, perfectly reflecting the commitment of the artistic team involved in the project. After the documenta, a completely different way of placing art directly linked to societal commitments, which was a source of inspiration and provides food for thought to the group.

The next Visual Arts Repérage will take place during the professional days of the Lyon Biennale on 12 and 13 September.

On 16 and 17 June, Kultur | lx hosted for the first time a Visual Arts Repérage in Kassel (DE), during the professional days of the documenta, an event that marks the field of contemporary art every five years with its highly prospective, political and – this year too – polemical dimension. For the 18 artists who took part in this Repérage, it was not only a way to discover a curatorial proposal but also to meet outside the territory and exchange differently.

As part of its missions to support the career development of artists, Kultur | lx issued a call for applications in April for visual artists to participate in the Kassel documenta. No less than 18 artists responded positively to this call and were able to benefit from our support.

The Repérages enable participating artists to discover events that contribute to the history of their subjects and, at the same time, to confront their own practice with those of other artists or curators, who, in the context of the documenta, were largely drawn from the non-Western art scene. This is often an opportunity for them to take a step back from their own research and put it into perspective.

This year’s documenta, with its alternative, activist and heuristic dimension, took the form of an open-air laboratory conducive to (re)questioning. Exploring the links between art and forms of economic and political struggle in the service of social invention, the documenta tackled the question of Western norms (particularly museum norms) that govern (sometimes violently) our relationship with people and works. Curated by Ruangrupa, a collective based in Jakarta, Indonesia, the documenta left its Western comfort zone for the first time, while presenting practices and works that reflect interdisciplinary research and collective experience, which quite rightly could destabilise – in addition to the controversy it generated around the anti-Semitic intent of a series of works.

 

Prospecting for the benefit of dialogue
This prospective dimension of the event therefore forms a basis for reflection for many artists and can take the form of “continuing education”. It is therefore important for Kultur | lx to support them in this process and to open a discussion on the challenges of the contemporary scene. This is one of the other aims of these Repérages arrangements: by delocalising conversations about artistic practices outside Luxembourg, the participating artists were able to exchange with one another and get to know each other better. This dialogue continued beyond these two days, and it was a great success!

Bringing the scene to life thanks to exchanges, rich conversations between actors in the field of visual arts for the benefit of all, that is also where Kultur | lx wishes to focus on to support the careers of Luxembourg artists.