Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean’s Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion will be the site for a new exhibition of recent sculpture by the acclaimed artist Leonor Antunes’s (b. 1972, Lisbon). Antunes will create a new installation that exploits the physical qualities and proportions of this iconic architectural space designed by Ieoh Ming Pei. Antunes presents new and recent sculptures as well as a new floor work inspired by the work and ideas of Italian architects Franca Helg and Franco Albini, and the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. The exhibition is organised in dialogue with a sister exhibition by Antunes, vazios, intervalos e juntas developed for the Museu d’Arte de São Paulo (MASP).
The sculptures of Leonor Antunes are often conceived and installed in response to a given spatial situation, its architecture and history as well as the physical or sensory experience of that place. Her works draw upon research that has encompassed less visible figures Modernist architecture and design. These include architects Lina Bo Bardi, Eileen Gray, Egle Trincanato, and Carlo Scarpa, designers Anni Albers and Clara Porset, and the artists Lygia Clark and Mary Martin. Antunes interprets their forms, motifs and measures in materials and textures such as rope, wood, cork, leather and brass, and a sculptural vocabulary inspired by handcrafted and artisanal techniques. Working at different scales and through processes of knotting, sewing, beading and weaving, Antunes creates spatial environments composed of draping grids, and suspended, free-standing and climbing forms that constitute a visual and sculptural choreography and whose visual narratives are woven through time and through space.
Leonor Antunes. vides, intervalles et jonctions is part of a new programme of exhibitions in which artists are invited to create works for the Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion of Mudam.
Curator Suzanne Cotter, assisted by Nelly Taravel
Location Level 0: Pavilion
Artist biography
Leonor Antunes (b. 1972, Lisbon) has held solo exhibitions at the Museo Tamayo, Mexico (2018); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2017); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016); CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux (2016); New Museum, New York (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2013). In 2019 Antunes represented Portugal at the 58th Venice Biennial. Her work has been exhibited in significant international surveys including the 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018); 57th Venice Biennial (2017), 8th Berlin Biennale (2014). She was awarded the Zurich Art Prize in 2019. Her work is held in major public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; Serralves Foundation, Porto. Antunes lives and works in Berlin.
