Memo. Remembering the Futures at CID Grand-Hornu

Running from March 29 to August 30, 2026, Memo. Remembering the Futures at the CID — Centre for Innovation and Design at Grand-Hornu in Belgium brings together a constellation of international artists and designers to confront one of the defining anxieties of our era: what happens to the things we are losing, and how do we hold on to them?

Curated by the duo d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts) and co-produced with the Fondation d’entreprise Martell, the exhibition takes its philosophical cue from Proust’s meditations on memory in In Search of Lost Time — specifically the idea that identity is inseparable from the environments and sensory worlds we inhabit. As those environments are increasingly destabilised by climate change, human expansion, and ecological collapse, the exhibition asks: how do we preserve, transmit, and ultimately mourn what is vanishing?

The answer, according to the curators, lies not in passive documentation but in active, embodied engagement. The fourteen participating artists and designers, drawn from countries spanning the Philippines, New Zealand, Mexico, Cabo Verde, and beyond, employ strikingly diverse methods: sound, textile, performance, cartography, scent, and material experimentation. Each work functions as what d-o-t-s describe as an “acupuncture point” in the larger body of ecological discourse, targeted, sensorial, and urgent.

Among the communities and places given voice in this exhibition are the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, facing complete submersion by the end of this century; the olive-growing region of Apulia in southern Italy, devastated by the spread of the plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa; and Indigenous and rural communities in the Philippines grappling with the environmental disruption caused by large-scale dam construction. The Ugandan tradition of barkcloth-making, suppressed during the colonial era and now undergoing revival, also features, as does the fraught history of cotton cultivation in Cabo Verde, bound up with the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. As the curators note, the selected projects form “a sensitive and moving archive that encourages us to commit to preservation” of ecosystems and communities under threat.

The choice of venue is itself resonant. The Grand-Hornu, a former coalmine in the Hainaut region, is a site already steeped in a layered, complex history of industrial labour, social organisation and environmental consequence. Rather than nostalgia, the CID has long sought to project its heritage forward, using it as a lens through which to examine contemporary challenges.

The exhibition is also notably thoughtful in its own ecological footprint. Scenographer Olivier Vadrot designed a modular flatpack display system using primarily natural materials and reclaimed wood, compact enough to travel in a single truck — a practical enactment of the values the works themselves explore. The graphic system by WIP Office, built around paper as both material and metaphor, evokes archival systems while using only FSC-certified stock.

Throughout the course of the exhibition, there will be a cross-disciplinary educational programme that draws on the environment and neighbouring communities around the Grand-Hornu.

Memo. Remembering the Futures is on view at CID Grand-Hornu until August 30, 2026.

For more information:

CID Grand Hornu

@cidgrandhornu

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