The mythical figure of Melusina permeates the artistic projects presented as part of LUGA, Luxembourg Urban Garden, 2025. In The Lower World, Susan Philipsz lets her siren’s voice resonate, while Laure Gauthier reinvents it in a fable with a novel, Mélusine Reloaded. The Lower World, the echo of Melusina Legend and urban architecture combine underground in a unique sound installation by Susan Philipsz. The Scottish artist has taken over the Aquatunnel with The Lower World, an immersive work commissioned by Mudam Luxembourg. She transforms the Aquatunnel’s underground urban space into a world of magical resonances. True to her exploratory approach, the artist has worked with the specific characteristics of the space, taking advantage of the tunnel’s natural acoustics. Thus, she encourages visitors, through multiple associations, to reflect on their surroundings. This introspective and unprecedented work traverses a 900-meter tunnel, connecting the Pétrusse Valley to the Pfaffenthal district, a place normally closed to the public, where sounds become matter. Inspired by the mythological figures of the Greek sirens, whose songs bewitched sailors to the point of their doom, the artist gives voice to the shadow of Mélusine, the spirit of the waters and a tutelary figure in Luxembourgish folklore.

Her legend is closely linked to the Bock rock, to the story of a fairy or creature half-woman, half-fish. Melusina is connected to water, to nature, to hidden knowledge. She is also a free woman, imposing her own conditions, and master of her own metamorphoses, until Raymondin deceives her and breaks the sealed pact. It is a masculine transgression that provokes the departure and the irreversible. The raw structure of the Aquatunnel offers a sonic flow that is both captivating and melancholic, with sound unfolding in successive waves. With The Lower World, Susan Philipsz transforms a functional space into a poetic one. The legend of the fairytale of Melusina, spirit of the Alzette or winged builder of the Poitou region, spans the centuries, transforming itself according to the gaze cast upon it, and is anything but a fixed narrative. In Laure Gauthier’s Melusina Reloaded, this hybrid figure comes to life in a futuristic dystopia.

As part of Luxembourg Urban Garden, Melusina was at the heart of a fruitful dialogue between novelist Laure Gauthier and historian Sonja Kmec. In Melusina Reloaded, awarded the 2024 First Novel Prize, Laure Gauthier propels the hybrid builder fairy into an imaginary future. Between ecological tale and social satire, her contemporary reinterpretation draws a poetic vision of the Poitevin myth. In a multi-polluted, barely futuristic world, where industry has given way to controlled tourism, the reader becomes a “Crossing Tourist” (TT), immersed in a disconcerting universe. The novel’s language is riddled with acronyms (SAF, ZTA, DSCO, etc.) and mimics the failings of a desiccated and extremely bureaucratized universe, where love is under surveillance and emotions are considered suspect. In this fossilized society, Melusina returns, unruly and determined to re-enchant a world on the verge of collapse. She reappears as a figure of insubordination and guardian of the last vestiges of life. Designated with or without a capital letter, she overturns established logic, advocates sensory experience in the present, and rebuilds a world by embodying hope. A poetic manifesto, this novel thus subverts myth to imagine a habitable future. The 21st-century Melusina is part of a broader movement of contemporary reinterpretation of this famous anguiped figure. Through different approaches, sound artist Susan Philipsz and Laure Gauthier reveal new transformations of Melusina, always elusive and constantly evolving.
The Lower World exhibition will be open until October 2025.
Two entrances are available: either on the Pétrusse side or the Pfaffenthal side.

It is open to the public from 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday to Sunday.