I FOLLOW RIVERS AT LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK
During the 2025 edition of Luxembourg Art Week, Marie De Decker presented I Follow Rivers within the Delen Private Bank space. In the context of Luxembourg’s leading contemporary art fair, the work unfolded an intimate narrative connected to family memory and the gestures of textile-making.
I Follow Rivers takes as its starting point an eighteenth-century blown-glass globe once used by lacemakers. Filled with water and placed in front of a light source, the object amplified the light and made the intricacy of their work easier to perceive. Transformed by the artist, it retains the memory of this function without attempting to reproduce it.
Suspended in space, the glass enters into dialogue with palladium filigree, mother-of-pearl and pearls connected to Marie De Decker’s family history. The lines surrounding the sphere evoke the river systems of Flanders, textile structures and the ramifications of living systems. The work thus brings together a domestic object, a territory and a memory transmitted by women.
Water remains at the heart of the piece. Once necessary to the functioning of the lamp, it becomes a perceptual and symbolic material: it conducts light, alters vision and connects the different temporalities held within the object.
Presented within an international art fair, I Follow Rivers does not seek to impose a monumental narrative. Its presence instead relies on close attention: observing transparency, following the lines and perceiving what endures of an ancient gesture within a contemporary work.
