Tina Gillen to Represent Luxembourg at 59th Venice Biennale

Luxembourg's Ministry of Culture and Mudam Luxembourg (Musée d'art moderne Grand-Duc Jean) have announced that Tina Gillen will represent the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at next year's Venice Biennale, the 59th international exhibition of contemporary art, which will take place from May to November 2021.

At the end of the selection process, which attracted 19 candidates, the jury selected Tina Gillen's project for its artistic and intellectual relevance, for its visual strength, and for its sensitive approach to space.

Entitled "Faraway So Close", Tina Gillen's project is conceived as a "living painting" deployed on the scale of the Luxembourg Pavilion. It offers a reflection on the relationships between interior space and the outside world and will take shape within a specific scenographic device inspired by cinematographic sets. Following on from the themes that run through the artist's work, such as architecture, landscape and the relationship between abstraction and figuration, it will give rise to the creation of new paintings and works in situ, in dialogue with the historic space of Sale d'Armi, within the Arsenale, and the context of the Biennale.

Suzanne Cotter commented on the choice of the jury, which she chaired: “The jury was won over by the convincing force of Tina Gillen's project and her pictorial practice, which takes into account the history of painting while confronting it with other media, such as photography and cinema, and by the artist's ability to go beyond the traditional framework of the canvas. The Jury also appreciated the way in which the project resonates with issues that cut across contemporary societies and the current global situation: our relationship with nature and the landscape, with the images that surround us and with other forms of life.”

Tina Gillen (born in 1972 in Luxembourg) has presented solo exhibitions at the Bozar in Brussels (2015), at the Mudam Luxembourg (2012), at the M museum in Louvain (2010), as well as at the Galerie Nosbaum Reding in Luxembourg, which has represented her since 2001. She has also participated in numerous collective exhibitions, in institutions such as the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (2019), the Mudam Luxembourg (2018, 2010, 2009), the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2012), MuZEE in Ostend (2010), Wiels in Brussels (2009), M HKA in Antwerp (2007) and the Platform Garanti in Istanbul (2004). A graduate of the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst in Vienna and the HISK in Antwerp, she did residencies at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and at the ISCP in New York. She teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and lives and works in Brussels.

The jury was composed of Suzanne Cotter, director of Mudam, president; Kevin Muhlen, director of Casino Luxembourg - Forum for contemporary art; Anke Reitz, curator of the Steichen Collections - CNA in Clervaux; Dirk Snauwaert, director of Wiels in Brussels; Lorenzo Benedetti, curator at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen; Michelle Cotton, head of the Artistic Programming and Content Department at Mudam; and Christophe Gallois, curator, responsible for exhibitions at Mudam.

Mudam Luxembourg has been designated project leader for the official representation of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg at the 59th Venice Biennale by the Ministry of Culture.