“I Follow Rivers” at Luxembourg Art Week A Personal Tribute Presented on a European Stage
During the 2025 edition of Luxembourg Art Week, I Follow Rivers was showcased on the booth of Delen Private Bank, offering this deeply personal and symbolic work a prominent place within one of the most dynamic contemporary art events in Europe.
A leading event on the European art calendar
Luxembourg Art Week (LAW) is the country’s main international contemporary art fair, bringing together galleries, institutions, and art professionals from across Europe and beyond.
According to publicly available information:
-
The 2025 edition welcomes 77 exhibitors from 15 countries across 4 continents.
-
Held over a 5,000 m² temporary structure, the fair creates a unique space where established galleries meet young galleries, artist-run spaces, and cultural institutions.
-
Previous editions have drawn around 18,000 visitors, including collectors, curators, designers, architects, and art lovers.
Participating in such an event means entering an international dialogue, confronting artworks with diverse audiences, and offering them a visibility that extends far beyond Luxembourg’s borders.
I Follow Rivers found its place there with clarity and strength.
A work rooted in heritage, memory, and territory
What makes I Follow Rivers so powerful within this context is the story it carries — a story woven from family history, regional identity, and the legacy of women.
-
The work is built from an 18th-century lace maker’s magnifying globe in hand-blown glass — an authentic working tool once used by lace makers who filled the sphere with water and placed a candle behind it to magnify their stitches.
-
Marie transformed this object into an intimate tribute to her grandmother, a seamstress and lace maker who passed down her knowledge and techniques.
-
Some of the pearls integrated into the piece belonged to her, symbolising femininity and the thread between generations.
-
The palladium lacework that surrounds the globe follows the imaginary paths of the rivers running through Flanders — a region stretching from northern France to Belgium and the Netherlands, whose lace tradition built a cultural and economic heritage still recognised today.
Through water, glass, light, and metal, I Follow Rivers becomes a bridge between past and present, between personal memory and collective history.
A meaningful presence on the Delen Private Bank booth
Exhibiting this work with Delen Private Bank made perfect sense.
The bank’s Belgian roots — at the crossroads of French- and Dutch-speaking cultures — resonate naturally with the cultural identity embedded in this object.
The dialogue between the heritage of the Flanders region and Delen’s own identity created an authentic connection, giving the artwork a context aligned with its origins.
What this exhibition brought
Showing I Follow Rivers at Luxembourg Art Week offered:
-
European-level visibility within a high-quality international fair
-
A renewed reading of the work, highlighting its poetic and historical depth
-
Opportunities for new connections with collectors, curators, and institutions
-
A space to share a narrative that blends craft, heritage, and contemporary creation
By presenting this work in such a setting, Marie De Decker reaffirmed her commitment to reconnecting materials, memory, and territory through a contemporary artistic language.
