Location: Cercle Cité | Place d’Armes
In 2022, Julien Hübsch worked on a large-scale installation on the Metzeschmelz industrial site in Esch-Sur-Alzette. This vast industrial landscape was once the reason for families from Portugal, Italy and Ex-Yugoslavia to come to Luxembourg to start a new life.
The artist digitally fragmented pictures of his onsite installation Composition YV and turned them into 4 glitched flags, quoting another famous blue flag: the European one. The themes of migration and the so-called “European idea” are being discussed – now, maybe more than ever and by default are engraved in the relics of the industrial past of Luxembourg. With this in mind, a work that seems to be only formal becomes political… Combined with the colour blue and the way the pictorial composition sits in the format, the meaning behind the flag becomes just what it is – fragmented.
That being said, isn’t it ironic that a blue flag is normally being given to those that provide economically healthy tourism?
Julien Hübsch is working and living between Luxembourg and Mainz. In his work, he is interested in the perception of urban spaces and their actors. He studied painting at Bauhaus University Weimar, HGB Leipzig and expanded painting under Shannon Bool at Kunsthochschule Mainz. His institutional representations include exhibitions at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Casino Luxembourg, a nomination for the Robert Schuman Artprize 2021, as well as gallery shows at Lage Egal Berlin and Reuter Bausch in Luxembourg.