A free spirit, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, is someone who "thinks
otherwise than is expected of him in consideration of his origin,
surroundings, position, and office, or by reason of the prevailing
contemporary views" (Human, All Too Human,1878). As the German
philosopher saw it, one must seek to become "untimely" and remain a
"stranger" to one's time in order to question its premises. This view to
states of alienation unites the positions of fourteen young
Luxembourgish artists in Freigeister, the publication accompanying the
celebrations on occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Musée d'Art
Moderne Grand-Duc Jean. In recent years, Luxembourg's art scene has
grappled in a wide variety of ways with the challenges that come with
the small yet economically successful country's ongoing transformation.
Charting realities between the familiar and the unknown, the artists
featured in Freigeister employ photography, painting, and installation
as well as film, sculpture, printmaking, and performance art to paint a
carefully considered but by no means dispassionate portrait of today's
society in an effort to build bridges between identity and the future.