périscope
périscope
Artist residency from 02.06 to 06.06.2025
Exhibition from 06.06 to 07.09.2025
VENUE: Casino Display, 1, rue de la Loge, L-1945 Luxembourg
"As these words take shape, the feminist march moves and the crowd chants through the streets of the city. I find myself reflecting on the continuing struggles that women face in a world still largely governed by patriarchal structures. As I sit with the history of women’s fights for equality, autonomy, and recognition, I am reminded of how far we’ve come, and yet how much more there is to do. Women’s labor—particularly care work—remains undervalued, and our bodies are still not entirely our own, bound by laws and cultural norms that seek to control rather than liberate.
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In this moment of reflection, I am filled with a deep awareness of how this struggle is reflected in the very space that will house périscope. Situated in a historical space marked by patriarchal structures in Luxembourg, Casino Display holds layers of significance. It is here that the personal, the political, and the historical meet."
Shade Sadiku Cumini is a visual artist from Luxembourg whose work explores the intersection of surrealism, abstraction, and emotional intimacy. Her works engage with the fragility of both the individual and collective cultural memory. The visual language she crafts, often tender and poignant, speaks directly to the vulnerability and resilience inherent in the experience of being a woman, navigating structures of oppression. Her work embraces a feminine, delicate, intricate, and often ephemerallanguage that is often considered weak or superfluous—a contrast to the rigidity and permanence of the patriarchal forces that govern the world around us. Shade is a member of the Afro-feminist Papaya Seeds Collective.
How can art engage with the institutional and historical structures that have perpetuated these inequalities, and how can we, as active practitioners, begin to envision an alternative future through our engagement?
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It is in this context that Shade Cumini's work is so striking: fragility, as she intends it, is not a sign of weakness but a tool of resistance. Viewers in turn are required to kneel down in order to view périscope. The discomfort of physically lowering oneself before the work mirrors the psychological discomfort of confronting patriarchal structures. Yet, in kneeling, one is also invited into a space of reflection, engagement, and subversion—an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of historical oppression while simultaneously engaging with the artistic work of a woman artist who redefines what it means to be vulnerable, resilient, and powerful.
Visual: Shade Sadiku Cumini
