Mudam Performance Season: The Illusion of the End

Mudam Performance Season: The Illusion of the End is a two-week exhibition devoted to performance in contemporary art. The exhibition, the first of its kind at Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, sees the ground floor of the museum play host to a series of new performances and installation by artists from Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and Switzerland who are gaining international critical acclaim.

Titled after an essay by the influential French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End features works by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Jacopo Jenna, Nicholas Grafia, Mikołaj Sobczak and Vasya Run. The exhibition takes as its starting point the “fatal strategies of time” that shape our ways of thinking about history and its imagined end. Conceived in response to our present moment, The Illusion of the End presents works that have been shaped by the continued political and cultural upheavals of recent years. Responding to changes in our collective and individual perceptions of time, the works share a notion of time that endlessly loops, according to our emotional, psychological and existential needs. They raise questions about a collective sense of alienation and detachment, our futures and the possibility of radical change.

Curator Joel Valabrega, Curator of Performance & Public Programmes 

Programme of performances

Sunday, October 3
2pm–6pm Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz – Ongoing Performance with Arantxa Martinez and Renen Itzhaki
Wednesday, October 6
11am Jacopo Jenna – Module 1
3pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 2
5pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 3
7pm Jacopo Jenna – If, If, If, Then (Expanded version) (2021)
Thursday, October 7
2:30pm Jacopo Jenna – Désir Mimétique – Workshop Mudamini 
Friday, October 8
11am Jacopo Jenna – Module 1
3pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 2
5pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 3
Saturday, October 9
7pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 1
8pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 2
9pm Jacopo Jenna – Module 3
10pm Jacopo Jenna – If, If, If, Then (Expanded version) (2021)
Wednesday, October 13
2pm Vasya Run – Solo 1
4pm Vasya Run – Solo 2
7pm Vasya Run – Stay here – you are the main act (2021)
Thursday, October 14
2pm Vasya Run – Solo 1
3pm Nicholas Grafia and Mikołaj Sobczak – Failing on Stage – Art Freak Workshop 
4pm Vasya Run – Solo 1
Friday, October 15
5pm Nicholas Grafia and Mikołaj Sobczak – Rooms
Saturday, October 16
4pm Vasya Run – Stay here – you are the main act (2021)
Sunday, October 17
4pm Nicholas Grafia and Mikołaj Sobczak – Rooms

The exhibition is supported by The Italian Embassy in Luxembourg and its partners (as part of the Italian Contemporary Art Day). Technical support by noc.turn asbl

Also on view  
Post-Capital: Art and the Economics of the Digital Age October 2, 2021–January 16, 2022
Leonor Antunes: joints, voids and gaps through November 14, 2021   
Mudam Collection: 25 years of the Mudam Collection through April 18, 2022

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean opened in 2006 in a purpose-built building designed by the renowned Sino-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei and is located in the Park Draï Eechelen, overlooking the historic city of Luxembourg. Through its collection, exhibitions, artistic and educational programmes and partnerships, Mudam Luxembourg aims to advance its mission to present the most relevant contemporary art of our time to the largest possible public.