Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Luxembourg

Discover the latest addition to MUDAM’s collection, Radio Luxembourg: Echoes across borders. This exhibition explores the history and impact of Radio Luxembourg, a pioneering broadcaster that played a significant role in shaping European culture and politics during the mid-20th century.

Close to the museum, on the esplanade of the Park Dräi Eechelen, opposite the Ville Haute, Mudam will present the iconic artwork The Living Pyramid (2015) by Hungarian-American artist Agnes Denes (1931, Budapest), a pioneering figure of ecological and environmental art. Conceived as a monumental sculpture with a natural life cycle, The Living Pyramid takes the form of a nine-metre-high pyramid on which grow more than two thousand flowering plants selected by the artist from local flora. Denes originally created this work for the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York and has since reproduced it on several occasions, including documenta 14, held in Kassel, Germany in 2017. For this new presentation, The Living Pyramid is augmented by an audience participation project, also imagined by Denes. In the months leading up to the installation, participants are invited to complete a questionnaire on the meaning of life (https://d2smv9sex1hihw.cloudfront.net/documents/QUESTIONNAIRE_time_capsule.docx). Their responses will be gathered in a time capsule, which will be buried near the pyramid and opened in a thousand years.

Scottish artist Susan Philipsz (1965, Glasgow), known for her installations exploring the sculptural and emotional dimensions of sound, has been invited to create a new work for Luxembourg’s Aquatunnel, a unique landmark of the city’s urban heritage. The 900-metre-long tunnel runs beneath the Ville Haute, connecting the Pétrusse Valley to the Pfaffenthal Quarter. Featuring the artist’s voice and playing through twelve speakers placed in different parts of the tunnel, the sound installation The Lower World evokes both the sound of civil defence sirens and the song of the Sirens, who, in Greek mythology, lured sailors to their deaths. ‘The separated voices will be arranged in such a way that the siren sound will in turn be melodic, melancholic, dissonant and haunting as it passes through the space: a current of sound that will appear to rise and fall, coming in waves. With this work, I mean to fill the Aquatunnel with sounds, working with the specificities of the space and encouraging visitors, through multiple associations, to think about their surroundings,’ observes the artist.

Tiffany Sia’s exhibition Phantasmatic Screens explores memory in exile through the symbolic dimension of landscape. In The Sojourn (2023), one of two film installations in the show, Sia retraces the steps of director King Hu (1931–97), acclaimed for his ‘wuxia’ martial arts epics. Hu fled mainland China for Hong Kong in 1949 following the Civil War – a pivotal moment in Chinese history during the Cold War period – later relocating to Taiwan. There, he recreated the atmosphere of his original home in cinematic fantasies set in the Taiwanese mountains. Sia reflects on how Hu ‘reconstructed his birthplace, Beijing, which he’d left as a child and could no longer return to, reflecting on an old world that resided in the recesses of memory’. Sia revisits the filming locations of Dragon Inn (1967) with actor Shih Chun – who played the film’s protagonist – as her guide. Transformed by urbanisation, tourism and vehicular traffic, these sites now stand in stark contrast to the sublime landscapes of Hu’s cinema. Her film meditates on how, by bringing images together, narratives are constructed, conditioning our perception of space. Visual and sonic dissonances invite reflection on the tension between remembered and actual landscapes shaped by exile, language barriers and cultural translation. Omitting subtitles in some parts of the film, Sia draws attention to dialect, sound and tone – underscoring the fragmented and elusive nature of memory. Projected onto a wavy curtain, the film takes sculptural form, extending Sia’s ongoing interest in the conditions of cinematic experience, also explored in her essay collection On and Off-Screen Imaginaries (2024). In Antipodes III (2024), Sia presents found footage of an idyllic 24-hour panorama appropriated from a live-stream of a militarised site in Kinmen, the closest Taiwanese island to China. Part of a series that isolates fixed camera views of sites central and peripheral to Cold War tensions in the Pacific, the work dwells on landscapes visibly or invisibly marked by militarised violence. These haunted terrains reveal how memory and place are co-constituted through geopolitical conflicts. In its mode of presentation, Antipodes III echoes media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s insight – ‘We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.’ – suggesting how the historical significance of these places continues to shape the present of the Pacific region.

Originally created for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, A Comparative Dialogue Act is the result of an ongoing collaboration between artist and musician Andrea Mancini (1989, Luxembourg) and the multidisciplinary Brussels-based collective Every Island... (rest of the description)

What if a sculpture is not only an object to look at, but something expansive, conditioned by your gaze, your thoughts, your questions? What if the museum invites you to explore it in the same way you would explore a garden? Not a garden made of plants and paths, but one made of forms, meanings, and encounters. Jardin des possibles temporarily transforms one of Mudam’s galleries – the Jardin des Sculptures – into a space for possibilities and slowed-down, mindful action, rhythm and thought. This shift proposes a space that, like a garden, combines the visible and the invisible, the tamed and the wild, and that is ultimately shaped by its visitors. As a possible way to start, we invite you to move around the sculptures slowly, taking your time and letting your mind wander. How might this affect your perception of the artworks around you? What do they convey to you? Where do artworks begin and end? What might you notice if you stayed and observed a little longer? The gallery is designed to welcome you in a way that resists the accelerated rhythm of our lives. Alongside sculptures by Bert Theis, Jason Dodge, Heimo Zobernig, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Su-Mei Tse, Monika Sosnowska and David Zink Yi, there are sitting areas and reading corners available for you to relax or create something unexpected. The sculptures composing this garden are part of the Mudam Collection; some play with notions of balance, emptiness and fragility, while others engage with language, memory and the surrounding architecture. Brought together in this space, they remind us that sculpture can be many things at once. Jardin des possibles is a place for contemplation and interactions. It aims to favour conversations, moments of reflection, and different ways of viewing and experiencing art.

Working across textiles, sculpture and performance, South African artist Igshaan Adams transforms overlooked materials from daily life in Cape Town into powerful reflections on notions of collective belonging, resilience and care. Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now will present newly commissioned and existing works, including monumental tapestries adorned with beads, chains, rope and ribbons, as well as a new large-scale environmental installation of his dance prints. Drawing on Adams’ personal memories informed by apartheid-era South Africa, the exhibition will also feature site-specific suspended sculptures examining the impact of lived experiences on the human psyche, with a particular emphasis on the healing potential of movement and dance. Inspired by Adams’ communal values and studio environment, this presentation will showcase a selection of textile swatches from the artist’s studio, which visitors will be invited to touch and explore. Through a collaborative practice, Adams’ work positions art as a vehicle for healing and connection – especially vital in our current era. Comprising more than sixty works produced over the past decade until today, Igshaan Adams: Between Then and Now – organised by Mudam and The Hepworth Wakefield in collaboration with ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum – is the largest exhibition on the artist’s work to date.

7 Paintings – 7 Encounters invites visitors to discover painting through a series of unique experiences. Seven major works from the Mudam Collection will be exhibited one at a time for a few weeks each, inhabiting the exhibition space alone. This cycle of presentations, including works that for the most part have never been shown at the museum, will transform the gallery into a space for silent contemplation and direct engagement. In this suspended context, time and space seem redefined, opening the way to new ways of exhibiting, as well as of seeing and experiencing the works. Through this cycle, seven individual artistic practices will be revealed successively, each resonating differently with the history of painting. From Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism, from social engagement to formal experimentation, 7 Paintings – 7 Encounters will highlight diversity in pictorial creation.

Simon Fujiwara will transform Mudam into an immersive world, placing his works within a unique exhibition environment that draws on theme-park design. Bringing together projects spanning seventeen years, this mid-career survey will offer an insightful view onto Fujiwara’s practice. Drawing on both personal narratives and cultural phenomena, he reflects on the mechanisms of history, art history and architecture. With disarming humour and critical wit, the work exposes their entanglement with contemporary forms of advertising, entertainment and online culture. This exhibition will trace the evolution of the artist’s complex visual language, highlighting Fujiwara’s distinctive ability to reveal the absurdities and contradictions of the world we inhabit.

The 1980s were a decade defined by paradoxes: the gleaming surface of pop culture and the deep fractures of global politics; the rise of new technologies and the slow unravelling of old ideologies; the birth of MTV and the shadow of Chernobyl. The exhibition Video Killed the Radio Star will explore how the cultural and political transformations of the 1980s still inform the world we live in today. Drawing from the Mudam Collection and contextual documentation materials, the exhibition will revisit a pivotal moment in global culture: a time when image overtook voice, access replaced ownership and aesthetics began to mirror power in new ways. It will also examine the evolving perceptiveness and sensibilities of a world moving into a hyper-mediated era. From the Cold War’s final acts to the rise of neoliberalism, the 1980s marked a profound reorientation in the Western world – one that was soon reshaped by the emergence of other cultural forces, shifting the narrative and changing the game entirely.

This exhibition will be the first European survey examining the essential role of women artists from Japan in the global postwar era and the transformative decades that followed. Focusing on a period of significant social change, this comprehensive overview will offer an opportunity to encounter radical modes of artistic expression that emerged in Japan and its transnational community across Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. Organised into thematic sections, Japanese Women Artists after 1945 will provide an insight into dynamic cultural exchanges and the forgotten margins of modernism. Drawing from the artists’ personal lives, creative resilience and transnational activism, the exhibition will bring together works by Atsuko Tanaka, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Fujiko Nakaya, Tomie Ohtake, Taeko Tomiyama and Yoshiko Shimada, among many others – some of which have rarely, if ever, been shown outside of Japan. From Gutai to experiments in video art, the exhibition will explore the radical yet often overlooked contributions of Japanese women artists to global postwar art movements. Organised by Mudam in collaboration with Lenbachhaus, Munich, this presentation will reimagine the development of various transnational art histories from the 1950s to the 1990s through a contemporary lens.

The films and installations of Ana Vaz investigate the legacy of colonial modernity and its lasting impact on land and communities. In each of her works, she focuses on the scars, ruins, ghosts and obscured stories that inhabit these territories, while also tracing the potentialities, intensities and alliances that may arise from them. Subverting the rational subject of Western narratives, Vaz approaches human, animal and vegetal worlds through what she calls ‘embodied cinema’. In it, affects and bodies take precedence.

Eleanor Antin (1935, New York) is considered a pioneer representative of conceptual, feminist art. Her multimedia practice – spanning photography, film and video, performance, text, installation and drawing – explores questions of identity and politics through stories that intertwine personal and historical. Fictional alter egos, such as The King , The Ballerina or The Nurse appear in many projects in various forms, subverting the forces behind societal roles and historical narratives. The iconic photographic series 100 Boots (1971–73) – a road movie without people – is an example of the witty, ironic and political awareness that characterises her work. Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972) is an early feminist examination of the female body through taxonomy systems, often driven by patriarchal and colonial forces. Antin’s practice has been groundbreaking for subsequent generations of artists working with performance and self-representation. This first major retrospective since 1999 – and the first ever in Europe – presents Antin’s œuvre in full breadth. The exhibition highlights the continued relevance and influence of her work from the late 1960s till today, when issues of power imbalance and collective and individual representation have taken on renewed urgency.

Scottish artist Susan Philipsz (1965, Glasgow), known for her installations exploring the sculptural and emotional dimensions of sound, has been invited to create a new work for Luxembourg’s Aquatunnel, a unique landmark of the city’s urban heritage. The 900-metre-long tunnel runs beneath the Ville Haute, connecting the Pétrusse Valley to the Pfaffenthal Quarter. Featuring the artist’s voice and playing through twelve speakers placed in different parts of the tunnel, the sound installation The Lower World evokes both the sound of civil defence sirens and the song of the Sirens, who, in Greek mythology, lured sailors to their deaths. ‘The separated voices will be arranged in such a way that the siren sound will in turn be melodic, melancholic, dissonant and haunting as it passes through the space: a current of sound that will appear to rise and fall, coming in waves. With this work, I mean to fill the Aquatunnel with sounds, working with the specificities of the space and encouraging visitors, through multiple associations, to think about their surroundings,’ observes the artist.

Berlin-based, US-American artist Christine Sun Kim will create a site-specific installation for Mudam’s Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion. Her multidisciplinary practice focuses on the visual, social and political dimensions of sound and language. Materialising the world of sound visually – through infographics, musical notations and American Sign Language (ASL) – Kim shares her lived experiences as a Deaf person questioning the power systems and unperceived norms that govern the public and the private space. Her incisive self-devised strategies – laced with lyrical irony – expose entrenched forms of exclusion and amplify perspectives that are too often overlooked.

The films and installations of Ana Vaz investigate the legacy of colonial modernity and its lasting impact on land and communities. In each of her works, she focuses on the scars, ruins, ghosts and obscured stories that inhabit these territories, while also tracing the potentialities, intensities and alliances that may arise from them. Subverting the rational subject of Western narratives, Vaz approaches human, animal and vegetal worlds through what she calls ‘embodied cinema’. In it, affects and bodies take precedence. For her first major institutional exhibition, a modular environment designed for the occasion will host a constellation of Vaz’s recent works, including the three-channel film installation É Noite na América (2022), the last chapter of her Meteoro series (2023–25) and a new film produced in the Amazon region. The environment will also host events and workshops, which will turn the galleries into laboratories for radical pedagogy.

Dans le cadre de la 10e édition du Mois Européen de la Photographie (EMOP) placée sous le titre Repenser la photographie, la bibliothèque InfoLab du Casino Luxembourg accueille The Hidden Library de l'artiste Marco Godinho, sous le commissariat de Paul di Felice, en collaboration avec le Cercle Cité. The Hidden Library est une invitation à entrer dans l'intimité de l'artiste. L'exposition propose une expérience immersive et participative, jouant sur l’alternance entre absence et présence, distance et proximité. Les photographies choisies par Marco Godinho, insérées comme des marque-pages dans les ouvrages qui l'inspirent, transforment l’espace de la bibliothèque en un terrain d’exploration poétique et esthétique. La découverte de ces photographies personnelles tisse un lien intime entre le visiteur et le processus créatif de l’artiste.

Aline Bouvy is a Belgian-Luxembourgish multidisciplinary artist. In her artistic approach, she does not favor any particular medium: the exhibition is her medium, a playground where the body is subjected to experiments. Her works tell about identity, bodies, intimacy, taboos. At Casino Luxembourg, the solo exhibition Hot Flashes explores the transition from childhood to adulthood, a period that shapes the construction and development of every individual. The exhibition takes a critical look at the stages of our lives - constantly under influence, caught in the straitjacket of educational, social, moral, family and political convictions, subjected to the gaze of others and to a relative freedom. By playing with optical effects and perceptual exploration, the Hot Flashes exhibition focuses on questions of scale and perspective. New works, specifically conceived for the exhibition, engage a reflection on how our perception affects our relationship to the body and space. The exhibition is an invitation to everyone to position themselves as a critical observer of their own social and political construction.

Durant la pandémie, Nora Cristea et Vincent Schneider, designers basés à Berlin lancent la plateforme d'art en ligne CAT (Contemporary Artist Things) avec pour ambition d’apporter notoriété et soutien à la scène artistique contemporaine émergente. Avec leur exposition €AT, le Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain transpose dans l’espace institutionnel cette initiative curatoriale et offre une visibilité nouvelle aux artistes présent·e·s sur la plateforme. Pensée comme une allégorie d’un dîner où dialoguent création et accessibilité, l'exposition rassemble sur deux grandes tables – à la manière d'un banquet – le travail d’une cinquantaine d’artistes internationaux à travers un large catalogue d’œuvres proposées en éditions limitées et disponibles à l’achat à des prix avantageux. L’intégralité des recettes est reversée aux artistes, affirmant ainsi l’engagement total du Casino Luxembourg en faveur de la création contemporaine émergente. Spécialement conçues pour l’exposition, plusieurs éditions inédites seront dévoilées par les artistes Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard, Vanessa Brown et Mariechen Danz dont les productions ont été réalisées avec le soutien du Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain.

Avec Land in Motion. Transforming People and Nature, le Nationalmusée um Fëschmaart propose un regard transversal sur l’évolution des paysages et l’empreinte humaine au fil des siècles. Découvrez, à travers des récits archéologiques, historiques et artistiques, comment les êtres et les éléments se sont tour à tour apprivoisés, façonnés et parfois même abîmés. Cette relation dynamique et complexe, éclairée à partir du motif du paysage, est explorée de sorte à faire appel aux sens des visiteurs.euses. L’exposition intègre un parcours pour enfants, invitant ainsi à une découverte en famille.