On Wednesday 22 October 2025, the City of Luxembourg (VdL) announced the Luxembourg representatives for the 17th edition of the Robert Schuman Art Prize.

The Robert Schuman Art Prize is awarded every two years by the cities of Luxembourg, Metz, Saarbrücken and Trier (QuattroPole network) and for the 17th edition, curators Liliana Francisco and Steven Cruz selected the four artists to represent the City of Luxembourg in the competition.

At the request of the two Museums of the City of Luxembourg (Lëtzebuerg City Museum and Musée d’Art de la Ville de Luxembourg), the two Luxembourgish curators selected four artists based on the criterion: how can art today reaffirm the importance of emotions, intimate experiences and human connection in a world increasingly dominated by individualism and social disconnection? 

The VdL said: “The chosen artists reflect the ‘multiplicity’ of Luxembourg, its cultural diversity, cosmopolitan and multilingual character, with works which are highly contemporary in style, will engage with the tensions of our time: social alienation, the search for identity, latent dystopia and the illusion of reality shaped by our perceptions.”

Bruno Oliveira (born in Portugal, 1993; lives and works in Luxembourg)

Project: Sanfins

  • The artist revisits his childhood in the Portuguese village of Sanfins, exploring its absences and imagining what might have been. His video installation presents an immersive journey. The work addresses uprooting, the abandonment of rural spaces, the fragility of heritage and the challenge of constructing an identity between two cultures.

Jil Lahr (born in Luxembourg, 1991; lives and works in Hamburg)

Project: Das Haus ist mir ein Traum

  • The artist gathers everyday objects, found materials and natural and personal elements to create simple and original installations, including a dome made from orphaned socks. She examines what our gaze chooses to ignore and what these omissions reveal about us. Her universe blends reality and illusion, creating atmospheres that are at once ideal, unsettling and filled with memories, incorporating personal, cultural and spiritual connections.

Maïté Seimetz (born in Luxembourg, 1995; lives and works between Paris and Luxembourg)

Project: Decepticles

  • The artist explores the shifting boundary between art, design and technology by creating a series of anthropomorphic and absurd furniture pieces that are both functional and disorienting. Seimetz offers a critical reflection on the role of objects in our lives, their emotional and symbolic potential and explores the possibility of an “artificial connection” between humans and non-human entities. Her work blends science fiction and medieval imagination, while her furniture becomes narrative agents, carrying a critical perspective on solitude, community, materiality and the future.

Zoriana Tymtsiv (born in Ukraine, 2006; lives and works between Antwerp and Luxembourg)

Project: Beneath the Surface: The Skin We Wear, The Skin We Share

  • The artist approaches skin not as a boundary but as a shared surface: a symbolic territory where our identities, behaviours and social inheritances are negotiated. Through nude bodies painted without clear outlines, stretched skins resembling rugs and figures of observing-imitating children, she interrogates our tendency to shape ourselves through mimicry and offers a rare and lucid perspective on the human condition.

The 2025 edition of the Robert Schuman Art Prize is organised by the City of Metz and the École supérieure d’Art de Lorraine (ÉSAL). The works of the 16 artists selected by the curators of each QuattroPole city will be exhibited from Thursday 13 November 2025 to Sunday 11 January 2026 at three venues in Metz (France): Galerie Octave Cowbell, the ÉSAL gallery and the Arsenal Jean-Marie Rausch exhibition gallery.