Aline Bouvy per il Lussemburgo

 

Il Lussemburgo proporrà un padiglione elaborato da Aline Bouvy, con la curatela di Stilbé Schroeder

Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, appointed Commissioner of the Luxembourg pavilions at the Venice Art and Architecture biennials by the Ministry of Culture, and Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, curator of the 2026 and 2028 Biennales, have selected artist Aline Bouvy to produce the exhibition at the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale.

Statement by the Commissioner and Curator

By selecting Aline Bouvy, Kultur | lx and Casino Luxembourg seek, above all, to honour and showcase the artist’s 25-year long career. Aline Bouvy has built an international career that has been tremendously consistent in artistic terms whilst also making successfully bold choices that always surprise. Refusing to restrict herself to expected norms or make compromises, Bouvy explores a range of techniques, creating a body of work that is dense and polymorphic, unfolding over time, fed by constant research, individual and group exhibitions, artist residencies and international collaborations.

Casino Luxembourg has followed Aline Bouvy’s work for many years, and she has been part of several group exhibitions at the institution. The relationship was consolidated during preparations for her first individual exhibition in Luxembourg in 2025, curated by Stilbé Schroeder.

Aline Bouvy’s selection for the 2026 Venice Biennale is therefore based on a clear artistic foundation and a well-established relationship which will be essential for any potential collaboration of this scale. Developing a project for the Biennale, which follows on from her individual exhibition at Casino Luxembourg, will allow Bouvy to begin this new chapter with the additional experience and confidence gained through her collaboration with Casino Luxembourg.

2026 will be the 30th anniversary year for Casino Luxembourg, a leading cultural institution that has already helped organise Luxembourg’s presence in Venice, having been actively involved in 7 pavilions. In recent years, Casino Luxembourg has also served as an important space for monograph exhibitions by artists from Luxembourg included in its artistic programming, and also by inviting and supporting many artists to take part in exhibitions and projects with international partner institutions. Showcasing national contemporary artists is thus at the heart of Casino Luxembourg’s work. Supporting artists during events like the Venice Biennale is therefore an honour that enhances and complements Casino Luxembourg’s initiatives to develop and promote artists.

Artist Biography

Born in 1974 in Belgium, Aline Bouvy lives and works between Belgium and Luxembourg. She explores a variety of mediums, including sculpture, drawing, photography and sound.

In her work, Bouvy questions our relationship with our bodies and space and invites us into new sensory experiences, both appealing and repulsive, where the body becomes a medium. Connecting desire and empathy, shapes and languages emerge where images or words might not otherwise occur.

Bouvy’s works are a loaded sensory experience linked to identity and taboos. They represent the history of both male and female bodies and their underlying relationships: sexual, domestic, intimate, and political. By revisiting the slow, utopian trajectory of a culture turning away from the dominant models of patriarchy and heteronormativity, a libido freed of all morality, without judgement, brings down these bodies incarnating authority in a society that monitors and restricts our bodies. By laying bare a world under surveillance, Bouvy breaks aesthetic and political norms applied to power and domination, thus destabilizing our points of reference.

(Biography by Marianne Derrien).

Curator Biography

Stilbé Schroeder is curator and head of department for exhibitions and programme at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain.

After living, studying and working in Brussels and Strasbourg, Stilbé Schroeder returned to Luxembourg in 2015 to join Casino Luxembourg as an exhibition coordinator. In 2017 and 2019, she was deputy curator for the Luxembourg pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Since 2021, she has served as a curator involved in discussion and development of the exhibition programme at the museum.

A new support programme for artists

An innovation for 2026 will be a call for applications to select the artists who will receive support as they explore the Venice Biennale and its themes, both in terms of production and networks, and explore international aesthetics discourses. Several opportunities for discussion with the artist selected and international curators will be organised. A programme of visits and scouting will also be developed during the 2026 Venice Biennale.

This new programme combines several initiatives offered by Kultur | lx to support artists’ career development.

The call will be launched in February 2025.

Selection process for the 2026 Luxembourg Pavilion artist

The process to select the artist and the project for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale has evolved over time. Since 2011, the project for the Luxembourg pavilion in Venice has been chosen following a call for applications.

In order to reposition Luxembourg at this international event, the Commissioner, in agreement with the Ministry of Culture, has decided to adapt the selection process and give a greater role to the curator when choosing the artist, considering, above all, the artist’s career and international profile, as opposed to selecting a project.

Luxembourg’s presence at the Venice Biennale seeks to showcase and raise the profile of Luxembourg’s art scene, one of the Ministry of Culture’s priorities.

Supporting and promoting artists from Luxembourg abroad while also strengthening international relations through culture are key elements of this strategy. (Coalition agreement 2023 -2028, pp 185)

Presenting Luxembourg as an international actor and interlocutor for contemporary art and architecture includes initiatives to showcase artists, architects and architectural researchers who work in Luxembourg, along with the cultural institutions and stakeholders in Luxembourg involved.

“Aline Bouvy’s work reflects the creativity, diversity and high standard of our national art scene. Her exhibition at Venice in 2026 will boost Luxembourg’s presence at international level along with artistic and cultural exchanges.” Eric Thill, Minister for Culture

info https://www.kulturlx.lu/en/aline-bouvy-to-represent-luxembourg-at-the-2026-venice-biennale/