Every three years, young and emerging artists from Luxembourg and the Greater Region get the chance to present their work at the Triennale Jeune Création at the Rotondes. A total of 20 artists are taking part in the 6th edition of this group show.
"Common Ground" is the title of this Triennale Jeune Création. At the heart of the event is the so-called underground culture, namely everything that often slips through the cracks in society. The curators of this edition and creative minds behind the artist platform La Concierge, which is organising the show, Liliana Francisco and Steven Cruz, often move in foreign underground scenes themselves, Francisco said.
She explained that the inspiration behind Common Ground was to celebrate underground nightlife, something not really present in Luxembourg, where venues tend to be more commercial.
Francisco noted that both she and Cruz, through their experience abroad, had always gravitated towards places with a more underground feel, namely self-managed spaces that are not really commercial. They felt that something similar was missing from the local scene and wanted to recreate that sense of community in Luxembourg, she said.
The youngest of the 20 artists at the 6th Triennale Jeune Création is Marie Thill. The painter works mainly in large format and has produced a sizeable canvas for the exhibition. Her work shows a figure suspended in a water-like substance.
The artist has been engaging with the concept of identity and has sought to evoke it through the piece. To go beyond simply hanging the canvas on a wall, Thill has come up with something extra, with the painting suspended in front of a black curtain and lit from behind.
Photography is also a fixture of the Triennale. Pit Reding is one of several photographers exhibiting this year. His current work focuses in particular on the male body, and on bodies that do not conform to the general norm.
He finds his subjects online and prefers to photograph them outdoors, in nature. The idea behind the project is to encourage people to feel at home in their own bodies and to give greater visibility to certain body types.
Another participating artist is Roxanne Kisiel, who works with installation art. Usually engaged with print, sound, and textiles, the artist is presenting a white ceramic sculpture titled "Colonne végétale" at the Triennale, which floats in the air, held in place only by thin wires attached to the ceiling.
Kisiel said that assembling the piece is painstaking work. Every individual element is threaded onto the wire by hand, before the finished installation is carefully lifted into the air.
The Triennale Jeune Création opens on Friday, 26 June at 6pm at the Rotondes, with the exhibition running until 30 August. Concerts are also being staged as part of the show during the opening and on various other evenings. More information is available online.
