Tina Gillen's work exhibited at the Venice Biennale A Luxembourg artist represented at one of the most prestigious contemporary art events
Since 1988, Luxembourg has been a regular participant at La Biennale di Venezia. A different artist has represented the country at each edition of this large-scale international contemporary art event. Join us as we discover the exhibition "Faraway So Close" by Tina Gillen, a painterly installation at the Luxembourg Pavilion.
A painterly installation
Luxembourg painter Tina Gillen is representing the country at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. The exhibition "Faraway So Close" is a series of eight large-scale works in a painterly installation in the Luxembourg Pavilion.
The artist is particularly interested in connections between the interior space and the outside world, how we relate to the world around us and the themes of landscape and dwelling. The works, often inspired by photographic motifs, are compositions somewhere between abstraction and figuration, structure and improvisation, surface and representation of space.
The paintings evoke the four elements of the universe – earth, water, fire and air –, while also pointing to human-induced climate change. Tina Gillen takes her works out of their traditional framework, placing them into an installation, an architectural construction that conjures up painted film sets and inhabits the entire exhibition space. "Faraway So Close" also alludes to the history of the Sale d'Armi, which dates back to the 15th century and served as a former military storage in Venice. The sculpture "Rifugio", at the centre of the installation, was inspired by a seaside bungalow; it is a place where visitors can withdraw and observe the world around them.
Trailer of the exhibition “Tina Gillen. Faraway So Close”
Tina Gillen was born in Luxembourg in 1972. She lives and works in Brussels. She exhibits her work all over the world (Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Luxembourg, etc.). Two books have been published about her work: "Echo" (MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2016) and "Necessary Journey" (Hatje Cantz, 2009).
A brief history (of art)
Luxembourg's first steps at the Venice Biennale were difficult – unfortunately its first participation in 1956 initially remained a one-off... It was only thirty years later, in 1988, at the initiative of the artist Patricia Lippert, that the Ministry of Culture made a further attempt to participate in the prestigious artistic event. Since then it has never looked back.
In 2017, the Luxembourg government signed a contract with the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia that guaranteed Luxembourg's participation in the stunning Sale d'Armi for the next 20 years.
Exhibitions are organised alternately by Mudam – The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg and Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain. Every two years, the Ministry of Culture launches a call for proposals to select the artist and curator of its choice for the next edition of the Biennale.
List of participating artists
1956 / Joseph Kutter and Auguste Trémont
1988 / Patricia Lippert and Moritz Ney
1990 / Marie-Paule Feiereisen
1993 / Jean-Marie Biwer and Bertrand Ney
1995 / Bert Theis
1997 / Luc Wolff
1999 / Simone Decker
2001 / Doris Drescher
2003 / Su-Mei Tse
2005 / Antoine Prum
2007 / Jill Mercedes
2009 / Gast Bouschet & Nadine Hilbert
2011 / Martine Feipel & Jean Bechameil
2013 / Catherine Lorent
2015 / Filip Markiewicz
2017 / Mike Bourscheid
2019 / Marco Godinho
2022 / Tina Gillen
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