Since the end of June 2025, the rooftop of Le Corbusier’s iconic Cité Radieuse in Marseille becomes the stage for a new presentation by American artist Sterling Ruby. Hosted by MAMO, the contemporary art center founded by Ora Ïto, the exhibition features DOUBLE CANDLE (2018), a monumental bronze sculpture, and WALL (2017), the artist’s largest spray painting to date. Installed atop one of the 20th century’s most visionary architectural landmarks, the show runs through September 28th, 2025, and forms a compelling dialogue between form, memory, and modernist space.

Sterling Ruby, installation view, 2025 © Sterling Ruby; © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Thomas Lannes courtesy Gagosian

DOUBLE CANDLE and WALL spark Dialogue with la Cité Radieuse

On the rooftop of Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille, Sterling Ruby presents DOUBLE CANDLE and WALL in a rare European showing that places two of his most ambitious works into direct conversation with one of modernism’s most iconic buildings. DOUBLE CANDLE, a pair of seven-meter-tall bronze forms cast from soft Polyfleece, stands like sentinels above the city. The sculpture’s patinated surface and retained fabric folds evoke both domestic softness and monumental gravity — drawing parallels to historical statuary, the Twin Towers, and the rooftop chimneys of the Cité itself.

Facing it is WALL, the largest work in the Los Angeles-based artist’s SP (Spray Painting) series. Spanning the rooftop wall, its diffused layers of color and recurring horizon lines conjure smoggy vistas, industrial landscapes, and atmospheric tension. In this setting, the painting’s hazy geometry reflects the unique Mediterranean light that once drew Cézanne and Van Gogh, while its mood of fragmentation resonates with twenty-first-century anxieties. Both works extend Ruby’s interest in material transformation and spatial experience, creating a charged exchange with the Brutalist site. Together, they reframe the rooftop not just as an architectural landmark, but as a platform for contemporary reflection—where structure, memory, and atmosphere converge.

Sterling Ruby, installation view, 2025 © Sterling Ruby; © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Thomas Lannes courtesy Gagosian

On the Rooftop of Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse, completed in 1952 as a model for collective postwar living, now serves as both a UNESCO World Heritage site and a dynamic backdrop for Sterling Ruby’s monumental installation at MaMo by Ora Ïto. Ruby’s DOUBLE CANDLE and WALL do more than occupy this historic rooftop: they engage it directly, transforming its modernist ideals through a contemporary lens. The twin bronze towers of DOUBLE CANDLE echo and distort the rooftop’s sculptural chimneys, while the hazy expanse of WALL refracts the city’s light and layered history into an unsettling urban landscape. Founded in 2013 in the building’s former gymnasium, MaMo has become a vital platform for contemporary art, hosting bold projects that respond to architecture as both space and symbol. Ruby’s installation furthers this mission, turning the rooftop into a site of reflection, tension, and transformation. Here, vertical meets horizontal, monument meets atmosphere, and the utopian vision of the past is filtered through the fractured realities of today.

Sterling Ruby, installation view, 2025 © Sterling Ruby; © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Thomas Lannes courtesy Gagosian

Sterling Ruby DOUBLE CANDLE, 2018 (detail) Patinated bronze 292 x 72 x 32 inches (741.7 x 182.9 x 81.3 cm) Edition of 3 + 1 AP © Sterling Ruby courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio and Gagosian

Sterling Ruby DOUBLE CANDLE, 2018 (detail) Patinated bronze 292 x 72 x 32 inches (741.7 x 182.9 x 81.3 cm) Edition of 3 + 1 AP © Sterling Ruby courtesy Sterling Ruby Studio and Gagosian

Sterling Ruby, installation view, 2025 © Sterling Ruby; © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Thomas Lannes courtesy Gagosian

Sterling Ruby WALL, 2017 Spray paint on synthetic canvas 112 x 278 inches (284.5 x 706.1 cm) © Sterling Ruby | photo: Rob McKeever courtesy Gagosian

Le Corbusier La Cité radieuse, Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1945-1952 © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Paul Kozlowski courtesy Fondation Le Corbusier and Gagosian

Le Corbusier La Cité radieuse, Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1945-1952 © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Paul Kozlowski courtesy Fondation Le Corbusier and Gagosian

Le Corbusier La Cité radieuse, Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1945-1952 © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Paul Kozlowski courtesy Fondation Le Corbusier and Gagosian

Le Corbusier La Cité radieuse, Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1945-1952 © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Paul Kozlowski courtesy Fondation Le Corbusier and Gagosian

Le Corbusier La Cité radieuse, Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1945-1952 © F.L.C. / Adagp, Paris, 2025 | photo: Paul Kozlowski courtesy Fondation Le Corbusier and Gagosian

project info: 

name: DOUBLE CANDLE (2017), WALL (2018)
artist: Ruby Sterling | @sterlingruby
location: MAMO Art Center of La Cité Radieuse, 280 Boulevard Michelet, 13008 Marseille
dates: June 27th – September 28th, 2025

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Edward Burtynsky’s retrospective The Great Acceleration is currently on view at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. Presented across two full floors of the museum’s galleries on Ludlow Street, the exhibition assembles over seventy photographs alongside three ultra high-resolution murals and a visual timeline tracing the artist’s four-decade career.

Organized by ICP’s Creative Director David Campany, the show marks Burtynsky’s first institutional solo exhibition in New York in more than twenty years. It brings together a wide range of material, including both rarely seen portraits and globally recognized landscape images, some of which are being exhibited for the first time.

Edward Burtynsky, The Great Acceleration, ICP, installation view | image © Daniel Terna

edward burtynsky explores human-altered landscapes

The title Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration refers to the intensified pace of global human activity since the mid-20th century, particularly as it relates to climate, resource extraction, and industrial production. The photographer’s images track these dynamics with precision, capturing expansive mining pits in North America, oil infrastructure in Azerbaijan, and agricultural terraces in China, among others. His aerial compositions create a distance from which viewers can comprehend the full extent of altered terrain, while recurring themes such as fossil fuel dependency, industrial labor, and mass waste form a connective tissue across the works.

What emerges is a cumulative portrait of transformation, showing landscapes reshaped by ambition and exhaustion. The images on view across the ICP gallery rarely depict a single event. Instead, they offer visual evidence of systemic forces and long-term change.

Edward Burtynsky, The Great Acceleration, ICP, installation view | image © Daniel Terna

photographic approach and scale

Edward Burtynsky’s large-format prints shown throughout The Great Acceleration reinforce the monumental scale of their subjects. Their clarity and formal construction invite sustained attention, while the sheer size of the images creates an immersive experience within the gallery. The exhibition includes several mural-scale works that stretch across entire walls, offering a panoramic confrontation with their content.

These works share a heightened sense of surface detail and spatial rhythm. Roads cut into mountainsides, shipping containers tessellate across ports, and irrigation systems radiate outward in carefully measured arcs. Rather than romanticize or condemn, his framing positions the viewer within the complexity of global infrastructure.

Although Burtynsky is widely known for his elevated and often remote vantage points, The Great Acceleration also features close-range photographs that focus on the people embedded in these industrial ecosystems. Portraits of workers in factories, mines, and shipbreaking yards provide an essential human counterpoint. They foreground the individuals who shape, and are shaped by, the economies reflected in the photographer’s wider images.

Edward Burtynsky, Oil Fields #19a & #19b, Belridge, California, USA 2003 | image © Daniel Terna

Edward Burtynsky, The Great Acceleration, ICP, installation view | image © Daniel Terna

Edward Burtynsky, The Great Acceleration, ICP, installation view | image © Daniel Terna

Edward Burtynsky, Breezewood, Pennsylvania, USA, 2008

Edward Burtynsky, Salt River Pima and Maricopa Indian Community / Suburb, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, 2011

Edward Burtynsky, Highway #5, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2009

project info:

exhibition title: The Great Acceleration

artist: Edward Burtynsky | @edwardburtynsky

gallery: International Center of Photography (ICP) | @icp

location: 84 Ludlow Street, New York

on view: June 19th — September 28th, 2025

The post edward burtynsky maps four decades of earth’s industrial systems in new york exhibition appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

In summer of 2025, Swedish artist duo Bigert & Bergström present Broken Greenhouse / Embodied Climate Futures in Lund’s Botanical Garden. The site-specific installation explores projected climate pathways through five sculptural greenhouses. The exhibition is a collaboration between the artists, climate researchers from Umeå University, and the Botanical Garden, using architectural form to visualize the UN’s Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) for the year 2100. Each structure represents a different SSP scenario, translating scientific data into spatial and material experiences.

The Redhouse SSP2, 2025. 360 x 400 x 320 cm | all images by Jean-Baptiste Béranger

Five Climate Futures Interpreted Through Greenhouse Structures

SSP1 takes the form of a tube-shaped green greenhouse designed for circular living. Its systems are synchronized with diurnal rhythms, turning the space into a functioning environmental clock. SSP2 is materialized as an inverted red greenhouse resembling a cottage, where visitors can suspend themselves in a flagpole hammock. A third structure, SSP3, uses the shape of a rising line graph to structure a walk-through installation. Beaded glass curtains represent climate data, allowing visitors to physically engage with abstract metrics. SSP4 is embodied in a fractured greenhouse located in a more isolated section of the garden. Its cracked surfaces evoke a dried-out desert. The final installation, designed by Bigert & Bergström Studio, SSP5, is a brown greenhouse emitting smoke, symbolizing stagnation and high-emission trajectories.

the exhibition challenges viewers to rethink ecological responsibility

Broken Greenhouse installations Interpret Climate Uncertainty

The title Broken Greenhouse references both environmental degradation and the fragile state of current systems. The idea that climate change is beyond human control has been overturned, and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions are now firmly acknowledged. Bigert & Bergström’s installation invites reflection on these realities while exploring how future scenarios might be understood, anticipated, or reshaped. The subtitle Embodied Climate Futures reflects the project’s aim to visualize multiple scenarios, offering physical spaces that invite reflection on climate trajectories and potential responses.

Broken Greenhouse unfolds at Lund’s Botanical Garden

The Linechart Greenhouse SSP3, 2025. 400 x 750 x 300 cm

Bigert & Bergström collaborate with climate researchers and garden curators

The Pipedream SSP1, 2025. 310 x 600 x 300 cm

each greenhouse embodies a different climate scenario for the year 2100

spatial design translates scientific projections into physical experience

A Road Divided SSP4, 2025. 350 x 465 x 460 cm

architectural form becomes a tool for engaging with climate data

the installation brings abstract futures into tangible view

Preppers Delight SSP5, 2025. 200 x 400 x 240 cm

the exhibition addresses the human role in shaping climate outcomes

structures invite reflection on planetary vulnerability and resilience

project info:

name: Broken Greenhouse / Embodied Climate Futures
designer: Bigert & Bergström | @studiobigertbergstrom

dates: May 24th – September 20th, 2025

photographer: Jean-Baptiste Béranger | @jeanbaptisteberanger

production experts: Fredrik Eriksson, Queenning Zhao, Zoltan Schnierer, Jakob Niemann, Lars Hässler
models: Queenning Zhao
upholsterers: Mills Tapetserarateljé och Stén Möbeltapetsering
mechatronics: Björn Anéer
assistants: Tom Bigert, Liv Lemoyne
intern: Hektor Jonsäter
Soundwalk – production: Tim Bishop
Soundwalk – narrator: Robert Fux

supported by: Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation​, Formas, Längmanska, Arctic Centre at Umeå University, Climate Impacts Research Centre at Umeå University, Lund University Botanical Garden, Konstnärsnämnden

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

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Dustin Yellin’s exhibition ‘If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?’ is on view at Almine Rech in Tribeca through August 1st, 2025. This marks the artist’s first solo presentation with the gallery and brings together five new glass-layered sculptures and a trio of paintings that return to the medium after two decades.

Installed across the gallery’s broad footprint at 361 Broadway, the works occupy the space with a quiet density. Yellin’s signature glass sculptures, composed of stratified layers of found materials and painted gestures, sit upright like sentinels, each embedded with fragments of cultural memory and speculative futures. Rather than offering a linear narrative, the sculptures present themselves as vertical timelines — an architecture of simultaneity, compressed and suspended.

image © Dustin Yellin, courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech | photo: Dan Bradica

material memory on view at almine rech

The centerpiece of Dustin Yellin’s Almine Rech exhibition is titled ‘The Consequential Nature of the Simultaneous’ (2025) and reads as both a sculptural object and a spatial proposition. Inside its stacked glass panels, a mirrored tableau unfolds: on one side, alien astronauts gather around a NASA spacecraft and particle accelerator. On the other, an imagined Etruscan ceremony plays out in rich detail. Together, they form a structural bridge between scientific modernity and ancient ritual. Terence Trouillot, writing on the exhibition, describes the work as ‘an architectural container for converging belief systems, cultural ruins, and space-age imaginaries.’

The artist‘s use of layered glass creates chimera from serial sections. It allows the viewer to move through time as one moves around the work, each shift in angle producing a new composition. The sculptures act as dynamic facades, porous and refractive, housing the artist’s enduring inquiry into the nature of memory, collapse, and continuity.

image © Dustin Yellin, courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech | photo: Dan Bradica

a question of shelter and structure

The title of the exhibition, ‘If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?’, functions as a proposition by artist Dustin Yellin. A nest is created through instinct; a house, through design. But both serve as structures of shelter and survival. This line of thinking is echoed in Yellin’s material approach. His sculptures do not mimic architecture but embody its logics: selection, layering, preservation, framing.

In this sense, the works resemble living archives. They do not explain, but accumulate. ‘These are not narrative objects,’ Trouillot writes. ‘They do not explain themselves. Instead, they pose the kinds of questions that recur in Yellin’s larger practice: What survives? What connects? What is the nature of presence across time?‘

image © Dustin Yellin, courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech | photo: Dan Bradica

The works operate on geological timescales. Their materiality of glass, pigment, magazine clippings, and detritus evokes sedimentation, accretion, erosion. Trouillot points to the influence of ‘deep time,’ a concept from geology that renders human life as a fleeting moment in planetary history. Yellin’s sculptures, viewed in this context, function as ‘fossils of thoughts yet to fully form,’ as Trouillot puts it. Their stratified surfaces house what Jacques Derrida might call archival ghosts — gestures suspended in fragile cohesion.

This ethics of scale and memory has long been central to Yellin’s practice, including his work outside the gallery. As founder of Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Yellin has cultivated a multidisciplinary institution where art and science cohabitate. That impulse to build and layer resurfaces here in material form.

Dustin Yellin, Arcadia to Empire, 2025

Three new paintings included in the exhibition extend these themes. Vivid and hallucinatory, they hover between dreamscape and terrain. Rendered in fluorescent tones, the imagined environments resemble alien geology, their surfaces textured with volcanic crusts and luminous sediment. While more atmospheric than the sculptures, they share a spatial rhythm that is thick with ambiguity as they are difficult to date and suggestive of elsewhere.

Yet it is the sculptures that hold the room. They invite sustained attention, and in doing so, create space for reflection. At certain angles, the viewer’s face appears inside the layers, caught between the strata. The works become mirrors, then lenses. ‘If you move close enough,’ Trouillot concludes, ‘you might even see yourself — reflected, refracted, paused — in their layered glass and radiant fragments.’

Dustin Yellin, The Consequential Nature of the Simultaneous, 2025

Dustin Yellin, Seed 7, 2025

Dustin Yellin, The Habit of Nature (Study 2), 2025

image © Dustin Yellin, courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech | photo: Dan Bradica

project info:

exhibition name: If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?

artist: Dustin Yellin | @dustinyellin

gallery: Almine Rech Tribeca | @alminerech

location: 361 Broadway New York, NY

on view: June 26th — August 1st, 2025

install photography: © Dan Bradica

The post dustin yellin builds stratified glass sculptures for almine rech’s tribeca gallery appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Each summer, Arles becomes a vibrant center for contemporary art, photography, architecture, and design. Exhibitions, performances, installations, and talks unfold throughout the city — in museums, industrial spaces, public areas, and private venues.

In this guide, designboom rounds up some of the most interesting things to see and do in Arles during summer 2025. From major exhibitions at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival and LUMA Arles, to pop-up dinners by We Are Ona, architectural projects, and artist-led events, we offer a diverse cross-section of the city’s cultural happenings. Read on to explore a selection of highlights.

image by Lucas Miguel via Unsplash

RECONTRES D’ARLES

A cornerstone of the global photography calendar, the Rencontres d’Arles has, since 1970, transformed the French city into an open-air museum for contemporary image-making. Now in its 56th edition, the festival returns from July to September 2025 with a bold and politically charged program titled Disobedient Images. As nationalism, nihilism, and ecological instability grip much of the world, this year’s exhibitions — from Australia to Brazil, North America to the Caribbean — offer an urgent and poetic resistance. With a focus on cultural diversity, gender perspectives, and postcolonial narratives, the 2025 edition turns photography into a tool of commitment, defiance, and renewal.

Tony Albert (Kuku Yalanji), David Charles Collins and Kieran Lawson. Warakurna Superheroes #1, Warakurna Superheroes series, 2017. courtesy of the artists / Sullivan+Strumpf

ON COUNTRY: PHOTOGRAPHY FROM AUSTRALIA

Bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, this exhibition explores what it means to be ‘on Country’, a profound relationship with land, identity, and ancestry. Featuring leading voices like Tony Albert, Atong Atem, and Michael Cook, the show reclaims photography as a medium of truth-telling and cultural continuity in the face of colonial disruption.

where: Église Sainte-Anne 
when: July 7th – October 5th, 2025

Adam Ferguson. Dwayne John, off-siding a commercial kangaroo shooter, Adnyamathanha Country, Plumbago Station, South Australia, Big Sky series, 2023. courtesy of the artist

ANCESTRAL FUTURES: BRAZILIAN CONTEMPORARY SCENE

Rooted in the vision of a future shaped by ancestral knowledge, this group show features rising Brazilian artists like Denilson Baniwa, Ventura Profana, and Paulo Nazareth, who remix archives, challenge stereotypes, and confront systemic violence through collage, AI, and performance-based photography.

where: Église des Trinitaires
when: July 7th – August 31st, 2025

Mayara Ferrão. The Wedding, from Unforgetting Album, 2024. courtesy of the artist

BRANDON GERCARA: MAGMA IN THE OCÉAN

Hailing from La Réunion, Brandon Gercara fuses drag, volcanic symbolism, and visual performance to create a new cosmology for Kwir* identities. Their deeply political, emotionally charged works erupt with intersectional energy, transforming personal and collective trauma into artistic resistance and joy.

where: Maison des Peintres
when: July 7th – October 5th, 2025

Brandon Gercara. Behind-the-scenes photograph, 2022. © Guillaume Haurice. courtesy of the artist

CAROLINE MONNET: ECHOES FROM A NEAR FUTURE

In striking portraits of First Nations women, Caroline Monnet subverts colonial and patriarchal gazes, presenting Indigenous femininity as powerful, self-defined, and future-facing. With poise and directness, her subjects reclaim agency and visibility—offering not just critique, but a vision of collective empowerment.

where: La Mécanique Générale
when: July 7th – October 5th, 2025

Caroline Monnet. Echoes from a Near Future, 2022. courtesy of the artist

BMW ART MAKERS: Traversée du fragment manquant

To mark 15 years of partnership with Les Rencontres d’Arles, BMW presents Traversée du fragment manquant by artist Raphaëlle Peria and curator Fanny Robin, winners of the 2025 BMW ART MAKERS programme.

Through layered photographs and engravings, the duo revisits personal memories and the endangered trees of the Canal du Midi, exploring absence, landscape, and time. This poetic, tactile work exemplifies BMW’s long-term support for contemporary creation and emerging voices in visual art.

where: Cloître Saint-Trophime
when: July 7th – October 5th, 2025

image courtesy of BMW ART MAKERS

NAN GOLDIN – Stendhal Syndrome

Winner of the 2025 Kering | Women In Motion Award, Nan Goldin presents Stendhal Syndrome — a powerful slideshow merging portraits of her friends and lovers with classical art images taken over two decades.

Structured around Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the piece blends mythological narrative, Goldin’s voiceover, and music by Soundwalk Collective and Mica Levi. It culminates in a reflection on beauty, identity, and emotional overwhelm — a modern retelling of Stendhal’s famous collapse in the face of art.

where: Église Saint-Blaise
when: July 7th – October 5th 2025

Nan Goldin. Young Love, 2024. courtesy of the artist / Gagosian

CONSTRUCTION | DECONSTRUCTION | RECONSTRUCTION 

This landmark exhibition traces the pioneering vision of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), São Paulo’s avant-garde photography collective that redefined modernist imagery in Brazil. Spanning photograms, montages, and experimental processes, the works reflect a Brazil in transformation — socially, culturally, and visually. Featuring 33 photographers, including Geraldo de Barros, Gertrudes Altschul, Thomaz Farkas, and José Oiticica Filho, alongside Neo-Concrete figures like Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, and Hélio Oiticica, the show explores how photography shaped, questioned, and reconstructed Brazilian modernity. Curated by Helouise Costa and Marcella Legrand Marer, the exhibition reframes the underrecognized legacy of the Escola Paulista and its role in global photographic discourse.

where: La Mécanique Générale
when: 7 July – 5 October 2025

Ademar Manarini. Untitled, 1950. courtesy of Heitor and Vera Lúcia Manarini

GEORGES ROUSSE – UTOPIA

Georges Rousse transforms the Abbaye de La Celle with Utopia, a dual presentation of two site-specific installations and a retrospective. Engaging with the sacred architecture of the 13th-century Romanesque site, Rousse deconstructs space through illusion, color, and geometry—most notably with his signature circle and a striking use of yellow and black, nodding to Malevich’s Black Square. The exhibition also traces Rousse’s artistic journey since the 1980s, revealing a lifelong dialogue between photography, painting, and built space. This encounter between contemporary vision and historic monument offers a transcendent, timeless experience of place and perception.

where: Abbaye de La Celle
when: July 7th – October 5th 2025

Georges Rousse. Project for La Celle 1, 2025. courtesy of the artist

FUJIFILM RETURNS TO ARLES WITH FUJIKINA

Fujifilm returns to Arles from 8 to 12 July 2025 with the second edition of FUJIKINA, now part of the official Rencontres d’Arles program. Hosted at the former École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, the event brings together exhibitions, talks, workshops, portfolio reviews, photo walks, and product demonstrations. This year’s theme, Time as a Developer, is explored through A World in Color, a collaboration with Magnum Photos. The exhibition presents never-before-seen archive images alongside new work by Gregory Halpern. FUJIKINA will also highlight emerging talents in a special series of exhibitions on view during opening week. Invited guests include Raymond Depardon, Laura Bonnefous, Mathias Zwick, Magali Delporte, and others.

where: 16 Rue des Arènes
when: July 8th – July 12th, 2025 

image courtesy of Fujifilm

Arles Books Fair 2025

At the invitation of the Rencontres d’Arles, France PhotoBook presents the fourth edition of Arles Books Fair, celebrating the diversity and vitality of contemporary photobook publishing. Hosted at the École nationale supérieure de la photographie and the Collège Saint-Charles, the fair brings together over eighty international publishers, along with a program of talks and encounters with photographers and authors. France PhotoBook, supported by the French Ministry of Culture, unites key independent photography publishers in France, working to champion creative publishing and the photobook as a genre in its own right.

where: Collège Saint-Charles & ENSP
when: July 8th – 12th, 2025 

image courtesy of Rencontres d’Arles

LUMA Arles

Launched in 2013 by Maja Hoffmann as part of the LUMA Foundation, LUMA Arles is an interdisciplinary creative campus located in the Parc des Ateliers, a former railway site in Arles, France. Conceived as both a space for production and public engagement, it brings together artists, researchers, scientists, and cultural thinkers to explore urgent topics at the intersection of art, environment, human rights, and knowledge. Spanning 27 acres, the site combines seven restored 19th-century industrial buildings—renovated by Selldorf Architects—with The Tower, a striking structure designed by Frank Gehry that anchors the campus. The surrounding park and landscaped gardens, designed by Bas Smets, serve as a public space for art, biodiversity, and leisure. Visitors encounter installations, sculptures, and a living ecology that reflects the region’s natural rhythms. 

This year, LUMA Arles presents a rich array of exhibitions, from David Armstrong’s intimate portraits to Peter Fischli’s first solo show in France, alongside works by Koo Jeong A, Wael Shawky, Ho Tzu Nyen, and Bas Smets, offering bold perspectives on art, landscape, and contemporary life.

image courtesy of LUMA Arles

David Armstrong

Fifteen years after his first Arles showing curated by Nan Goldin, David Armstrong returns with a powerful tribute at LUMA Arles. A key figure of the Boston School, Armstrong’s intimate portraits captured a generation with raw honesty and quiet grace — friends, lovers, outsiders, and dreamers, framed with tenderness and clarity. Paired with his soft-focus landscapes, taken at the height of the AIDS crisis, the exhibition reflects a melancholic beauty and a fleeting sense of time. A celebration of attitude, vulnerability, and an enduring photographic legacy.

where: The Tower – Underground, Level -3
when: from July 5th, 2025

David Armstrong, 2025, The Tower, Underground Level -3, LUMA Arles, France. courtesy of the Estate of David Armstrong © Victor & Simon / Grégoire d’Ablon

Peter Fischli – People Planet Profit

In his first solo exhibition in France, Peter Fischli presents People Planet Profit, a multifaceted exploration of images, objects, and infrastructures shaped by late capitalism. Through sculpture, installation, video, and sound, Fischli probes the entanglement of meaning, labor, and value in a world saturated by digital and material flows. Set in the former Forges of the Parc des Ateliers, the show reflects on the evolution from industrial production to the image-driven economies of today.

where: Parc des Ateliers – Les Forges
when: July 5th, 2025 – January 11th, 2026

Peter Fischli, People Planet Profit, 2025, Les Forges, LUMA Arles, France © Victor & Simon / Grégoire d’Ablon

KOO JEONG A : LAND OF OUSSS ❲KANGSE❳

In her largest exhibition in France to date, LAND OF OUSSS [KANGSE], KOO JEONG A presents a luminous and multisensory universe that merges art, science, and the metaphysical. Through scent, light, sculpture, and phosphorescent paintings, the exhibition invites viewers into the elusive world of OUSSS, a term coined by the artist that suggests a shifting realm between presence and imagination. Installed across two levels of The Tower, the show resonates with Frank Gehry’s architecture and the landscapes of Arles, crafting a deeply poetic and immersive experience.

where: The Tower – Levels 1 & 2
when: from July 5th, 2025

KOO JEONG A, GITD, 5 August 2022 20:22 © KOO JEONG A

Wael Shawky – I Am Hymns of the New Temples

Wael Shawky transforms La Grande Halle into a vast, immersive environment that reimagines the mythic and historical. Centered on the ancient city of Pompeii, the exhibition blends sculpture, sound, and movement to explore the origins of belief and the human need for meaning. Drawing from Greek creation myths and layered with contemporary narratives, I Am Hymns of the New Temples is a powerful meditation on memory, transformation, and the echoes of civilizations past.

where: La Grande Halle
when: from July 5th, 2025

Wael Shawky, I Am Hymns of the New Temples, 2025, La Grande Halle, LUMA Arles, France. Victor & Simon / Victor Picon

Ho Tzu Nyen – Phantom Day and Stranger Tales

Ho Tzu Nyen is known for his immersive multimedia works that blend myth, history, and speculation. Phantom Day and Stranger Tales features five major installations from the past decade, including a new AI-generated piece, Phantoms of Endless Day, commissioned by LUMA Arles. Rooted in Southeast Asian histories and cultural narratives, the exhibition explores how stories are shaped and reshaped—through language, image, and technology. Merging film, animation, sound, and algorithmic editing, Ho crafts an intricate, hallucinatory world where past, present, and future continuously fold into one another.

where: The Tower
when: from July 5th, 2025

Ho Tzu Nyen, Phantom Day and Stranger Tales, 2025 – 2026, La Mécanique Générale, LUMA Arles, France. Victor & Simon / Grégoire d’Ablon

Bas Smets – Climates of Landscape

Renowned for his climate-responsive designs, Bas Smets reimagines cities as evolving ecological systems. Climates of Landscape, his first exhibition at LUMA Arles, presents an ambitious vision for urban resilience through landscape architecture. Featuring major projects in Paris, Antwerp, and Arles, the exhibition reveals how Smets’ work harnesses microclimates and vegetation to respond to the challenges of a changing environment. With the Parc des Ateliers as a central case study, the show explores how the careful design of public space can transform cities into living, adaptive ecosystems.

where: Le Magasin Électrique
when: July 5th – November 2nd, 2025

Bas Smets, Climates of Landscape, 2025, Le Magasin Électrique, Bloc A, LUMA Arles, Parc des Ateliers, France. © Victor & Simon / Grégoire d’Ablon

Sigmar Polke at Fondation Vincent Van Gogh

Fondation Vincent Van Gogh presents a major retrospective that celebrates the radical vision of Sigmar Polke (1941–2010), one of the most inventive and influential artists of the postwar period. Spanning six decades, the exhibition brings together a wide selection of paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and films, revealing Polke’s relentless experimentation and sharp-eyed critique of culture, politics, and the image. Opening with two rarely shown Van Gogh works, Peasant and Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes and Basket of Potatoes (1885), the exhibition reflects Polke’s interest in the intersections between high and low, past and present. Curated by Bice Curiger, assisted by Margaux Bonopera, the exhibition underscores Polke’s playful irreverence, his embrace of alchemical processes, and his subversion of artistic norms.

A parallel program of talks accompanies the exhibition, including Sigmar Polke and Photography, a two-part conversation series with figures such as Bice Curiger, François Halard, Christoph Wiesner, and Diane Dufour, exploring the lesser-known but groundbreaking photographic dimension of Polke’s practice.

where: Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles. 35 ter, rue du Docteur-Fanton
when: until October 26th, 2025

image courtesy of Fondation Vincent Van Gogh

Michelangelo Pistoletto & Lee Ufan in Dialogue at Lee Ufan Arles

This summer, Lee Ufan Arles hosts a dialogue between two major figures of contemporary art: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Lee Ufan. Born just three years apart, and associated respectively with Arte Povera and Mono-ha, the artists come together for the first time in this joint exhibition. Pistoletto presents a selection of historical and recent works in the Espace MA, alongside subtle interventions within Lee Ufan’s permanent installations. Despite distinct aesthetics, the exhibition reveals shared concerns — viewer presence, simplicity, space, and the infinite—offering a rare and resonant conversation across cultures and time.

where: Lee Ufan Arles, 5 Rue Vernon
when: June 25th – October 5th, 2025

image courtesy of Lee Ufan Arles

The First Exhibition of the Museum of Fashion and Costume

After five years of restoration, the Museum of Fashion and Costume opens in Arles with Collections-Collection, its inaugural exhibition. Set in the 14th-century Hôtel Bouchaud de Bussy — meticulously restored by Studio KO and architect Nathalie d’Artigues — the museum showcases two major Provençal collections: those of the Costa family and historians Odile and Magali Pascal.

The exhibition traces the region’s costume and textile history from the 18th century to today, featuring emblematic Arlésien garments and key historical pieces. It also includes a permanent artwork by photographer Charles Fréger: a luminous series of backlit portraits exploring collective identity through the iconic figure of the Arlésienne. Blending historical heritage with contemporary vision, the museum becomes a new cultural anchor in Arles.

where: Hôtel Bouchaud de Bussy
when: July 6th – January 4th, 2025

image courtesy of the Museum of Fashion and Costume

WE ARE ONA × Dalad Kambhu at La Villa Bank

WE ARE ONA and Luca Pronzato launch a new dinner series in Arles at La Villa Bank, featuring acclaimed guest cheffe Dalad Kambhu, known for her bold and refined cuisine. Each evening, a single table is set for a unique experience, designed by India Mahdavi, with custom furniture made specially for the occasion.

where: La Villa Bank
when: July 6th – 11th, 2025

image courtesy of WE ARE ONA

Villa Benkemoun

Just outside the city of Arles in France, one can find the iconic Villa Benkemoun, designed by Le Corbusier disciple Emile Sala. Built in 1974, the residence features fluid forms and dynamic spaces, originally crafted for Simone and Pierre Benkemoun, a couple who dreamt of living in a house that was transparent and open. Today, the residence still holds its importance as an architectural icon. Today, while no longer a private residence, it remains a significant architectural landmark, now repurposed as an exhibition venue that hosts various public events. The villa is open for visits throughout the summer of 2025. 

image by Eliott Le Nan

opening in summer 2026: Fondation Bustamante

French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante plans on opening the Fondation Bustamante in July 2026, transforming the 12th-century Sainte-Croix Church in Arles into a new cultural space. Designed by architect Charles Zana, the foundation is expected to host exhibitions, artist residencies, and public programs across three floors, with a café, bookstore, and library on the ground level. The foundation is set to preserve Bustamante’s archives, support artists through a dynamic exhibition program, and offer year-round masterclasses and talks. 

image © Hervé Hôte

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After seven years of restoration, the Carré Sainte-Anne in Montpellier reopens with a major new commission by JR, a participatory, large-scale tree installation titled Adventice. Unfolding within the nave of the neo-Gothic former church, the project transforms the historic site into a living artwork composed of 10,000 scanned hands from people across the world. Assembled into the form of a tree, the hands stretch toward the vaulted ceilings, forming a symbol of rootedness, migration, and collective identity.

In botanical terms, ‘adventice’ refers to plants that appear where they were not intentionally planted, often labeled as weeds. The exhibition reclaims this term to describe those presences that arrive uninvited but prove essential in the context of nature, cities, and communities. The massive tree of hands suspended inside the Carré Sainte-Anne captures this idea, with each hand representing an individual story and together forming a single, interconnected structure that grows with each new visitor. Additional hands can be scanned on-site and added to the artwork, allowing the installation to evolve throughout the exhibition’s run, which continues until December 7th, 2025.

Adventice exhibition view, Carré Sainte-Anne, Montpellier, 2025 | images © JR, unless stated otherwise

Adventice Connects Local Soil to Global Stories

With Adventice, French artist JR draws on a lesser-known chapter of Montpellier’s history, the arrival of foreign seeds through the medieval textile trade. Wool brought from Spain, North Africa, Constantinople, and Izmir was washed in the Lez river, unintentionally releasing seeds that took root along its banks. These plants, though not native, adapted and gradually transformed the landscape, contributing to the biodiversity of the region. The installation uses this ecological phenomenon as a metaphor for cultural exchange and migration, highlighting how external influences have helped shape Montpellier’s identity.

In addition to the central installation, Adventice features five new works in wood and paper that expand on the exhibition’s themes. These sculptural pieces, on view for the first time, extend JR’s language of human connection into more intimate material expressions. 

a living artwork composed of 10,000 scanned hands from people across the world

he hands stretch toward the vaulted ceilings

a symbol of rootedness, migration, and collective identity

each hand represents an individual story

JR under the tree | image by Christophe Ruiz, Montpellier Ville et Métropole

Adventice features five new works by JR in wood and paper

Adventice, #1, Bois, 2025 © JR

these sculptural pieces are on view for the first time

extending JR’s language of human connection

project info:

name: Adventice

artist: JR | @jr

location: Carré Sainte-Anne, Montpellier, France

dates: June 27th – December 7th, 2025

curator: Numa Hambursin

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V&A East Storehouse announces new details on the David Bowie Centre ahead of its opening on September 13th 2025 in London, England. Set to be the permanent home of David Bowie’s personal archive with more than 90,000 items, the museum allows visitors to schedule a one-to-one with the items on display so they can view certain objects more closely and with a reduced crowd. The David Bowie Centre archive includes handwritten lyrics, drawings, costumes, photos, letters, musical instruments, set lists, and design sketches. Some of the late revered artist’s unrealized projects are on display too, from ideas for albums to films and tours that were never finished. 

Isolar II poster magazine, David Bowie, 1978, US. Museum no. S.1171:1 to 2-2010. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London | all images courtesy of V&A Museum

More than 90,000 items on display within V&A East Storehouse

At the David Bowie Centre, opening in September 2025 within the V&A East Storehouse museum, the archive collection also showcases the artist’s many artistic identities, such as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane. Visitors can learn how he created these characters, how he used technology and science fiction, and how he designed his stage shows to be unique and theatrical in the permanent archival home.

Some of the highlights include David Bowie’s 1987 Glass Spider Tour as well as his 1987 concert at the Berlin Wall. The David Bowie Centre also features guest-curated displays, where artists who worked with him or were inspired by him choose memorabilia to show. One is by Nile Rodgers, a music producer who worked on David Bowie’s albums Let’s Dance and Black Tie White Noise.

photograph of David Bowie, Kevin Cummins, 1970s, Uk. Museum no: S.1326-2010. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Guest-curated displays with rare photos of studio sessions

For his guest curation, Nile Rodgers chooses items that show their friendship and musical teamwork, including the custom suit David Bowie wore on tour, photos of him recording music with Rodgers, some personal letters they exchanged, and several rare photos of studio sessions with backup singers, to name a few. Another display is by The Last Dinner Party, a modern British rock band, choosing objects from the 1970s that show David Bowie’s artistic energy, such as the handwritten lyrics from his Young Americans album and notes from his Station to Station tour.

The other archives are a manual for a special synthesizer Bowie used in his Berlin Trilogy albums as well as photos of the artist working in the studio. The David Bowie Centre, set to open on September 13th, 2025, was made possible by the David Bowie Estate, the Blavatnik Family Foundation, and Warner Music Group. It’s now part of the larger V&A Archive, which holds works from like Vivien Leigh, The House of Worth, and Glastonbury Festival.

Aladdin Sane album cover, Duffy and Philo, 1970, Uk. Museum no: E.583-1985. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Diamond Dogs, vinyl, produced by David Bowie, RCA Records, cover art by Guy Peellaert, 1974, England. Museum no. S.3354-2013. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

photograph of David Bowie, Terry O’Neill, 1974, England. Museum no. E.315-2011. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

project info:

name: David Bowie Centre 

museum: V&A East Storehouse | @vamuseum

opening date: September 2025

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Paysage de Pain is a public installation built from 780 salvaged baguettes, designed by MERO Studios in collaboration with the Montpellier-based nonprofit Pain de L’Espoir. Set in a sunlit courtyard in the Hôtel de Lunas during the 2025 Festival des Architectures Vives in Montpellier, the pavilion explores the potential of food waste, specifically surplus bread, as a spatial and sensory material.

In France, bread is essential to daily life, yet its abundance often leads to waste. According to a 2018 study by ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency), 11% of bread from bakeries is rejected for sale. Of this unsold bread, 15% is donated, 25% repurposed as animal feed, and 60% destroyed. Paysage de Pain transforms this symbol of waste into an immersive architectural experience. The installation explores gluttony not as excess, but as a lens for sustainable reinvention. 

all images by Paul Kozlowski

Public pavilion repurposes hundreds of leftover baguettes

The installation invites visitors to reflect on themes of gluttony and excess. The structure is a dialogue between indulgence and the urgency of environmental responsibility. Visitors are invited to move through dough-scented walls that cracked and aged in the summer heat, highlighting the tension between nourishment and discard. The project, developed by MERO Studios’ designers, foregrounds food waste as a cultural issue, transforming urban excess into a sensory, temporal monument. Here, gluttony becomes a celebration of transformation, an architectural delicacy that invites exploration and reflection on how we consume, discard, and create. In the spirit of the festival, Paysage de Pain is not only a feast for the senses but also a call to savor resources with care and ingenuity.

780 salvaged baguettes form the core structure of Paysage de Pain

a spatial installation exploring bread waste as architectural material

installed in the courtyard of Hôtel de Lunas for the 2025 Festival des Architectures Vives

Paysage de Pain responds to food waste through material reuse

bread walls crack and age under summer heat, revealing natural decay

visitors navigate dough-scented corridors made from surplus baguettes

bread becomes both material and message in this public installation

a sensory environment built from one of France’s most iconic staples

an ephemeral structure shaped by food, heat, scent, and time

bread waste is transformed into a tactile and temporal monument

the installation encourages reflection on how we consume and discard

Paysage de Pain reimagines gluttony as a site of transformation

MERO Studios explores biodegradable design strategies through a playful approach

project info:

name: Paysage De Pain
designer: MERO Studios | @mero_studios

lead designers: Megan Dang, Rose Zhang
location: Montpellier, France

photographer: Paul Kozlowski | @photoarchitecture.co

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

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For their first-ever dual presentation in a single venue, Numen/For Use unveils two immersive, large-scale installations, Net Taichung and String Taichung, at the newly inaugurated CMP Inspiration Museum in Taichung, Taiwan. On view through November 2nd, 2025, the temporary works – one a kinetic, climbable web, the other a silent, geometric grid – transform Kengo Kuma’s softly lit interiors into an unfolding spatial narrative. Linked through translucent corridors, the installations invite visitors to move between two interconnected spatial and physical experiences.

Initially a deflated shell, each volume expands as air pressure inflates it, stretching the outer membrane and pulling the internal web of nets or ropes into tension. This self-contained technique bypasses any need for rigid framing or scaffolding. Visitors are encouraged to enter and interact with these suspended worlds. In Net Taichung, they climb, balance, and crawl through a network that sways gently with their movements. Meanwhile, String Taichung invites a slower gaze through a tight, white, three-dimensional grid that hovers in space, its calm order broken only by the shifting perspective of those who walk within.

all images courtesy of Numen/For Use

collapsible nets enable flexibility in Net and String Taichung

The exhibition space inside the CMP Inspiration Museum, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, contributes in shaping the experience of the visitor. Its pale surfaces and controlled lighting enhance the dreamlike quality of the projects by the design collective Numen/For Use. Wrapped in a thin white membrane, the inflated skins act like giant soft boxes that diffuse light into a glowing haze that flattens shadows and makes it unclear where the surface ends and depth begins. This creates a puzzling experience where you feel like you’re inside a place that seems vast and unreal, yet at the same time solid and intangible.

Both works are designed to be completely collapsible, so when deflated, the nets and rope grids fold into themselves and shrink to a much smaller size, making them easy to store, transport, and set up again later. When reinflated, they quickly regain their full strength and tension, able to support the movement and weight of people. With Net & String Taichung, Numen/For Use encourages us to think about impermanence, touch, and the quiet but important role air plays in their design.

Numen/For Use unveils two immersive, large-scale installations, Net Taichung and String Taichung

on view at the newly inaugurated CMP Inspiration Museum in Taichung, Taiwan

the temporary works transform Kengo Kuma’s softly lit interiors into an unfolding spatial narrative

a kinetic, climbable web

the installations invite visitors to move between two interconnected spatial and physical experiences

each volume expands as air pressure inflates it

a tight, white, three-dimensional grid that hovers in space

pale surfaces and controlled lighting enhance the dreamlike quality of the projects

the installations are wrapped in a thin white membrane

the inflated skins act like giant soft boxes

a glowing haze flattens shadows and makes it unclear where the surface ends and depth begins

project info:

name: Net Taichung & String Taichung

artist: Numen/For Use | @numenforuse

location: CMP Inspiration Museum | @cmpinspiration, Taichung, Taiwan

architect of venue: Kengo Kuma and Associates | @kkaa_official

curator: CMP Group 

The post numen/for use suspends walkable net and string worlds in taiwan’s CMP inspiration museum appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

At the Fondation d’Entreprise Martell in Cognac, France, an exhibition titled ‘Memo. Remembering the Futures’ opens June 13, 2025, and runs through January 4, 2026. Curated by the Franco-Italian duo d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts) and co-produced with the Belgian design center CID at Grand-Hornu, the show brings together 15 transdisciplinary projects that explore how memory – personal, collective, material – can be used as a lens to address ecological loss and envision sustainable futures. The showcase includes works by artists and designers from around the globe, each engaging with sensory experiences, ritual practices, and archival gestures to respond to the escalating environmental crisis.

at the Fondation d’Entreprise Martell, the exhibition titled ‘Memo. Remembering the Futures’ runs through January 4, 2026 | image © Pauline Assathiany

Can a Rug, a Dress, or a Digital Island Keep the Planet Alive?

Established in 2017 in the heart of Cognac, the Fondation d’Entreprise Martell is an incubator for socially and ecologically engaged creativity. With a strong emphasis on regenerative design, the Foundation supports artists, designers, and researchers whose work contributes to environmental and social transition. Through residencies, exhibitions, and public programs, it fosters dialogue between disciplines, territories, and generations. Memo. Remembering the Futures exemplifies the Foundation’s mission: to provide a platform for emerging practices that rethink how we interact with the living world and respond to its ongoing transformation.

Memo. Remembering the Futures is built on the idea that remembering is not just a look backward – but a way of looking forward. In the face of ecological grief, extinction, displacement, and the fading of ancestral knowledge, the featured projects serve as ‘acupuncture points’ in the collective consciousness. Across media, from textiles and sound to performance and digital mapping, the exhibition invites visitors to experience memory as a dynamic, embodied, and often radical act of care.

Roberta di Cosmo, Rebirth – Trauma as a Performative Process, 2020 | image © Ilenia Tesoro

twenty artists Archive a Dying World

Performing Grief in Apulia, Italian designer Roberta Di Cosmo’s Rebirth–Trauma as a Performative Process centers on the devastating spread of the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium, which has decimated olive groves in southern Italy. Centered on the Apulian region’s olive trees, decimated by the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium, the work reflects on collective grief and ancestral knowledge.

The performance, created in collaboration with villagers, preserves harvest gestures and seasonal rituals at risk of disappearing with the groves themselves. The piece anchors itself in Il Gigante, a once-majestic olive tree said to be 2,000 years old, now lifeless. This symbolic skeleton serves as both witness and monument—testifying to a devastated landscape and the people who lived by it. Through embodied storytelling and ritual, Di Cosmo channels the trauma of loss into a process of cultural healing and ecological remembrance.

Emma Bruschi, Almanach Collection – Look 1, rye straw vest and pants | image © Cynthia Mai

Additionally, French designer Emma Bruschi pays homage to agricultural rhythms and ancestral skills with her Almanach collection. Made from rye straw grown on her family’s land in the French Alps, the garments are intricately plaited, woven, and crocheted into accessories and fashion pieces. Bruschi draws on a heritage of peasant crafts, reconnecting fashion with the patience of the growing season.

In a world dominated by industrialized fast fashion, her work insists on slowness, care, and intimacy with material. Every step, from sowing the seeds to stitching the final details, honors the temporal cycles of land and labor. Almanach revives rural memory not as nostalgia but as a radical, rooted alternative for the future of design.

Iamisigo, SS2024 collection Bonde la Vivuli / Valley of Shadows, barkcloth two-tone corset | image © Bugu Ogisi

Back in Africa, in her Bonde la Vivuli/Valley of Shadows collection, Nigerian designer Bubu Ogisi reclaims barkcloth – a sacred Ugandan textile historically used in spiritual and royal contexts. By incorporating this natural fibre into contemporary fashion alongside raffia and bronze, Ogisi weaves ancient knowledge into present-day storytelling. The garments pay tribute to Queen Nyabinghi, an East African ancestral figure whose priestesses wore barkcloth veils during rituals.

For Ogisi, fashion becomes a vessel for memory and resistance. Her work not only preserves endangered material traditions but also revives a matrilineal spiritual lineage that colonialism once sought to erase. Through I A M I S I G O, she creates clothing as living archives—artifacts of both aesthetic beauty and cultural continuity.

Into the Mountain, 2019 | image © Felicity Crawshaw, courtesy Simone Kenyon

Artists Simone Kenyon and Lucy Cash translate landscape into movement in How the Earth Must See Itself (A Thirling), a performance-film inspired by Nan Shepherd’s writings on the Scottish Cairngorms. The work features an all-women ensemble engaging in choreographed gestures across the Glen Feshie valley—reframing walking as a way of listening and belonging. Through touch, repetition, and presence, the performers make memory physical.

Set against a stark mountainous backdrop, the film meditates on how bodies can archive place. Just as the land carries imprints of water, weather, and time, so too do the dancers’ movements become inscriptions of awareness. Their choreography reminds us that to remember the earth is to feel it—viscerally, intimately, and again and again.

Resting Place, 2023, upholstered plywood, avocado dyed cotton and plated upholstery tacks, 20.5 x 86.5 x 37.5 inches | image © Fernando Laposse

And behold the avocado capitalism with Conflict Avocados by Mexican designer Fernando Laposse, who exposes the environmental and social costs of avocado monoculture in Michoacán. Once a local crop, the avocado has become ‘green gold’ – fueling deforestation, corruption, and cartel violence. Laposse documents this extractive economy through a blend of handcrafted furniture, textiles, and photojournalism.

The installation acts as both archive and protest, giving voice to displaced communities and threatened ecosystems, including the monarch butterfly’s habitat. By embedding his research into design objects, Laposse confronts the environmental and social consequences of Western consumer trends. Conflict Avocados urges viewers to reconsider what sustainability really means in a global supply chain.

Liselot Cobelens, Dryland, 2022, rug, 78.7 x 98.4 inches | image © Liselot Cobelens, Jon Mensink, Ton Cobelens & Ad Wisse

All while Dutch designer Liselot Cobelens transforms the impact of a devastating 2020 wildfire in the Deurnese Peel into a tangible, tactile memorial. The piece—a large, map-like wool rug—was physically burned by the artist using a welding torch, embedding the landscape’s trauma into the material itself. The eight tonal variations in the rug reflect the degrees of drought across the scorched national park, turning the object into a cartography of climate-induced transformation.

Drawing from archival research and fieldwork, Cobelens collaborated with local farmers and environmental experts to better understand the land’s ecological grief. By converting this research into design, Dryland becomes both an artistic response and a call for reflection on the human and environmental consequences of a warming world. It’s a woven warning that what burns today may not grow back tomorrow.

The First Digital Nation by Collider and The Monkeys, 2022 | image © Collider

Leading the visitor is powerful political gesture, Tuvalu, The First Digital Nation by Collider and The Monkeys that captures a real-time existential crisis: the total submersion of an island nation. Using 3D mapping, drone footage, and immersive digital media, the project virtually preserves Tuvalu’s geography, language, oral traditions, and natural landscapes. This digital reconstruction is a poignant act of cultural preservation as rising seas render the physical territory increasingly uninhabitable.

At once a technological solution and philosophical provocation, the project challenges global ideas of sovereignty and nationhood. Can a country survive in the cloud? Will international law recognize a digital state? Tuvalu forces viewers to confront the paradox of using cutting-edge technology to memorialize what we are failing to protect in the real world.

running through January 4, 2026, the showcase includes works by artists and designers from around the globe | image © Pauline Assathiany

each artist engages with sensory experiences, ritual practices, and archival gestures to respond to the escalating environmental crisis | image © Pauline Assathiany

Memo. Remembering the Futures is built on the idea that remembering is not just a look backward – but a way of looking forward | image © Pauline Assathiany

project info:

exhibition name: Memo. Remembering the Futures

organization: Fondation d’Entreprise Martell | @fondationmartell

concept & curatorship: d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet & Olivier Lacrouts) | @we_are_dots
scenography: Olivier Vadrot
graphic design: WIP office | @wip.eu
co-production: CID Grand-Hornu | @cidgrandhornu

artists: Félix Blume (France), Emma Bruschi (France), Liselot Cobelens (Netherlands), Collider x The Monkeys (Australia),  dach&zephir (France), Roberta Di Cosmo (Italy), Cian Dayrit & Cla Ruzol (The Philippines),  Alexis Foiny (France), Suzanne Husky (France / USA), Simone Kenyon & Lucy Cash (United Kingdom), Fernando Laposse (Mexico), Sally Ann McIntyre (New-Zealand), Neve Insular (Cabo Verde) , Bubu Ogisi / I A M I S I G O (Nigeria), Yesenia Thibault-Picazo (France)

dates: June 13, 2025 – January 4, 2026

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