Living Together

Esch-sur-Alzette is the second largest city in Luxembourg. Here, since 2014, the Festival, which started from the Kulturfabrik cultural center, has been carrying out an artistic and cultural program with the aim of transforming urban space in a sustainable way and promoting social cohesion throughout the Greater Region. The latter is a territory that extends and touches the whole of Luxembourg, the Belgian province of Liège, the French Lorraine, the Saarland and the German Rhineland.

London-based artist Helen Bur. Using traditionally influenced techniques, Bur’s paintings capture moments of quiet action frozen in the midst of happening. The lack of information or clarity in the scenes are meant to convey a sense of absurdity in the everyday and life in general.
The theme of the festival was ‘Living together’.  In 2018 Helen moved her life and studio into a warehouse in London with 12 other people. This wall is in the vicinity of an elderly care home. This lead the artist to think about how care homes are like a return to communal living where daily tasks like cooking, washing and cleaning are completed together, becoming little shared moments of interaction. I also thought it would be quite funny to make a painting about washing up... ;)