Cercle de Lectures - Entre deux chaises

This latest encounter in the series entitled En noir et blanc (In Black and White), dedicated to migrants and the way they are hosted in Luxembourg and elsewhere, resonates with a disturbing installation that is currently presented in the Ratskeller. With And They Lived Happily Ever After, Sophie Feyder, a Luxembourg artist with Peruvian roots and based Brussels, perfectly illustrates the migrant's paradox: eternally swinging between before and after, here and there, between the island entitled Not Yet and the one entitled No Longer, as poet Jean Portante might say. Six people from somewhere else – but there could be millions of them – are invited to take a stance, literally and in every sense of the expression, with regard to a minimalist, but oh, such a suggestive scenography. A chequered floor and two chairs representing the country of origin and the host country: and of course their hearts vacillate between the two. Seated on one side, the migrant is invited to simultaneously occupy/invest in the other, both physically and symbolically. Some simply knock over the chair, suggesting that they've had enough, others burden it with a suitcase, an atlas, a photo album, their memories and regrets, etc. In doing so, both types lead us to believe that the essential of their existential adventure is played out in the in-between, in the no man's land where anything can still happen, although nothing, or almost nothing will be as it was before. Once they cross the so-called arrival line, the race continues tirelessly, because life goes on after the princess gets married, after the discovery of the Eldorado, which may prove to be something else. And They Lived Happily Ever After? Not all of them, not necessarily, and not forever…

Free entrance, no prior registration needed.

Wearing a mask is recommended for the whole duration of the event.