Francelle Cane and Marija Marić selected as curators of the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2023
That Stayed on the ground Project by Francelle Cane and Marija Marić was unanimously selected by the jury to create the Luxembourg Pavilion for the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale. The jury appreciated the detailed analysis of the wider Luxembourg territory and its inhabitants, while giving the project a universal orientation. The winning team consists of the two curators Francelle Cane and Marija Marić, supported by an advisory board and a team of contributors from the fields of scenography, content production and media. They also want to rely on a network of Luxembourgish and international partners.
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The unbridled imagination of extractive growth has literally crossed the boundaries of the earth. This shift from mining on depleted Earth to its “invisible” backstage—celestial bodies, planets, and ultimately the moon itself—requires urgent consideration of what impact this shift will have on our understanding of the Earth, the resources, and the commons on the ground and above out. Dubbed the “rising star of the space industry” and “a pioneer in the exploration and exploitation of space resources”, Luxembourg, whose economy was once based on iron mining and steel production, appears as an important starting point for this debate. —Excerpt from the project “Down to Earth” by Francelle Cane and Marija Marić.
The winning project deals with major issues of the present: the question of land ownership, the use of space and resources as well as the return to the body and the sensitive. It aims to make visible a topic that mostly remains hidden by raising the question of the earth’s resources on different levels. Above all, it relativizes the future world we are creating, pushing beyond the earth and beyond the confines of human-exploited spaces.
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Both curators are architects and researchers from the University of Luxembourg. Francelle Cane has been the curator and scenographer for numerous exhibitions, including the Enter the modern landscape Exhibition for which she received the International WERNAERS Fund for Research and the Diffusion of Knowledge (FNRS), Brussels (BE) Prize. She is currently developing her doctoral thesis on this topic After the ruin. About property and territorial negotiations. Marija Marić works as a postdoctoral researcher in the master’s program in architecture at the University of Luxembourg. In 2020 she did her doctorate at the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich with a thesis on the role of communication strategists in the mediation, design and globalization of urban space.
The Luxembourg Ministry of Culture, Commissioner of the Luxembourg Pavilion, has commissioned Kultur|lx – Arts Council Luxembourg to oversee the selection of the prize winner and to produce the exhibition in collaboration with LUCA – Luxembourg Center for Architecture.
