Memo Grand-Hornu Exhibition: Remembering the Futures 2026

At the CID Grand-Hornu, a former Belgian coalmine reborn as a beacon of innovation, the exhibition Memo. Remembering the Futures opens a poignant dialogue with our eroding planet.

Featured Image: Rebirth-Trauma as a performative process, 2020 © photo Giulia D’Addario

Curated by d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts), with scenography by Olivier Vadrot and co-production by Fondation d’entreprise Martell, it runs from March 29 to August 30, 2026. Drawing from Marcel Proust’s sensory evocations of memory, the show spotlights artists and designers who archive threatened ecosystems, rural traditions, and endangered species through transdisciplinary works. Not as nostalgia, but as calls to action amid climate grief.In a world where landscapes submerge, species vanish, and cultural gestures fade, these “acupuncture points” in ecological discourse urge resistance through care. Echoing the site’s industrial heritage, the exhibition transforms human-induced loss into fertile narratives, inviting visitors to sensory immersion at Grand-Hornu’s evocative ruins.

Highlighted Works: Preserving the Fragile

Preserving a Vanishing Nation – Collider x The Monkeys (Tuvalu/Australia):
Despite minimal emissions, Tuvalu faces submersion by century’s end. This poignant project digitizes the archipelago’s land, seas, winds, language, and legends via 360° drones and 3D scans. Tuvalu as the world’s first digital nation, probing tech’s limits in preserving sovereignty.

Marking Trauma – Liselot Cobelens (The Netherlands):
From the 2020 Deurnese Peel wildfire’s collective scars, this scorched Dryland rug maps drought’s toll, crop failures, displaced wildlife, via archival weaves and a designer’s welding torch, a tactile reckoning with Europe’s fiery future.

Grieving a Dying Landscape – Roberta Di Cosmo (Italy):
Puglia’s ancient olive groves fall to Xylella fastidiosa; around “Il Gigante”, a 2,000-year-old tree’s skeleton. This performative ritual archives harvest gestures, transforming ecological grief into communal rebirth.

Honouring a Buried Legacy – Yesenia Thibault-Picazo (United Kingdom):
Above a Cumbrian airfield’s mass burial of 2001 foot-and-mouth victims, wax botanical forms resurrect the herd from site plants. Speculating geological “Cumbrian Bone Marble” eons hence, a poetic honouring of silenced lives.​

Documenting the Dark Sides of Monoculture – Fernando Laposse (Mexico):
Michoacán’s avocado “green gold” boom fuels cartel violence and monarch butterfly habitat loss; furniture and textiles from local fibers unmask this eco-social erasure, a stark homage to ravaged communities.​

These pieces, among others from global talents like Bubu Ogisi’s barkcloth reviving African rituals or Simone Kenyon and Lucy Cash’s embodied Cairngorms performance, form a travelling, low-impact show prioritizing FSC-certified paper and modular scenography for circular reuse.

Venue and Legacy

Housed in the UNESCO-listed Grand-Hornu, the CID champions design’s utopian edge, blending mediation programs with workshops on memory and ecosystems. Open daily (except Mondays) from 10 AM–6 PM; combined tickets €10. A must for collectors and connoisseurs seeking art that bridges past wounds to resilient futures.

www.cid-grand-hornu.be