The beauty of the dark

During our visit, Alexandra Uppman is wearing a T-shirt from her current favourites Urfaust, a black metal project from the Netherlands that disbanded last year. For the visual artist, black metal is more than just music, as can be seen from her contribution to the book Black Metal, a home. / Black Metal, une demeure. published last year (she was one of the authors of the book Becoming The Forest IV the previous year): "With Black Metal, I've built a place of peace and security, a home where I feel at ease. My work is in a way a visual transposition of that space and how I feel when I'm in it. With that, everything makes sense."

We meet Uppman in her studio, which is located in the former premises of the police school in Verlorenkost, where numerous artists have been able to pursue their creative work since the beginning of 2021 thanks to the AAPL (Artistes Plasticiens du Luxembourg). However, the whole area has a ghostly feel and exudes a morbid charm, which somehow fits in with Uppman's art.

We first became aware of the artist on social media, before we encountered her art in person at the end of last year as part of Cecil's Box, the art space of the Cercle Cité in the capital. Her work immediately captivated and fascinated us: More darkness than light, mysterious drawings influenced by Nordic mythology and folklore as well as black metal culture, strange candlesticks, and again and again trees and forests – all masterfully executed. The artist works mainly with charcoal in oil on paper, but is also active as a sculptor and creates mysterious installations.