{"id":2178,"date":"2025-07-02T09:20:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2025-07-02T15:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T15:29:14","slug":"artists-turn-ecological-grief-into-memory-for-memo-remembering-the-futures-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/02\/artists-turn-ecological-grief-into-memory-for-memo-remembering-the-futures-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"artists turn ecological grief into memory for \u2018memo. remembering the futures\u2019 exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell: memo. remembering the futures<\/h2>\n

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At the Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell in Cognac, France<\/a><\/strong>, an exhibition<\/a><\/strong> titled \u2018Memo. Remembering the Futures\u2019 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 \u2013 personal, collective, material \u2013 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<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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at the Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell, the exhibition titled \u2018Memo. Remembering the Futures\u2019 runs through January 4, 2026 | image \u00a9 Pauline Assathiany<\/p>\n

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Can a Rug, a Dress, or a Digital Island Keep the Planet Alive?<\/h2>\n

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Established in 2017 in the heart of Cognac, the Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell is an incubator for socially and ecologically engaged creativity<\/a><\/strong>. 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\u2019s mission: to provide a platform for emerging practices that rethink how we interact with the living world and respond to its ongoing transformation.<\/p>\n

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Memo. Remembering the Futures<\/a><\/strong> is built on the idea that remembering is not just a look backward \u2013 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 \u2018acupuncture points\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

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Roberta di Cosmo, Rebirth \u2013 Trauma as a Performative Process, 2020 | image \u00a9 Ilenia Tesoro<\/p>\n

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twenty artists Archive a Dying World<\/h2>\n

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Performing Grief in Apulia, <\/strong>Italian designer Roberta Di Cosmo\u2019s Rebirth\u2013Trauma 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\u2019s olive trees, decimated by the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium, the work reflects on collective grief and ancestral knowledge.<\/p>\n

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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\u2014testifying 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.<\/p>\n

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Emma Bruschi, Almanach Collection \u2013 Look 1, rye straw vest and pants | image \u00a9 Cynthia Mai<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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Iamisigo, SS2024 collection Bonde la Vivuli \/ Valley of Shadows, barkcloth two-tone corset | image \u00a9 Bugu Ogisi<\/p>\n

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Back in Africa, in her Bonde la Vivuli\/Valley of Shadows collection, Nigerian designer Bubu Ogisi reclaims barkcloth \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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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\u2014artifacts of both aesthetic beauty and cultural continuity.<\/p>\n

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Into the Mountain, 2019 | image \u00a9 Felicity Crawshaw, courtesy Simone Kenyon<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s writings on the Scottish Cairngorms. The work features an all-women ensemble engaging in choreographed gestures across the Glen Feshie valley\u2014reframing walking as a way of listening and belonging. Through touch, repetition, and presence, the performers make memory physical.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019 movements become inscriptions of awareness. Their choreography reminds us that to remember the earth is to feel it\u2014viscerally, intimately, and again and again.<\/p>\n

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Resting Place, 2023, upholstered plywood, avocado dyed cotton and plated upholstery tacks, 20.5 x 86.5 x 37.5 inches | image \u00a9 Fernando Laposse<\/p>\n

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And behold the avocado capitalism with Conflict Avocados by Mexican designer Fernando Laposse, who exposes the environmental and social costs of avocado monoculture in Michoac\u00e1n. Once a local crop, the avocado has become \u2018green gold\u2019 \u2013 fueling deforestation, corruption, and cartel violence. Laposse documents this extractive economy through a blend of handcrafted furniture, textiles, and photojournalism.<\/p>\n

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The installation acts as both archive and protest, giving voice to displaced communities and threatened ecosystems, including the monarch butterfly\u2019s habitat. By embedding his research into design objects, Laposse confronts the environmental and social consequences of Western consumer trends. Conflict Avocados<\/i> urges viewers to reconsider what sustainability really means in a global supply chain.<\/p>\n

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Liselot Cobelens, Dryland, 2022, rug, 78.7 x 98.4 inches | image \u00a9 Liselot Cobelens, Jon Mensink, Ton Cobelens & Ad Wisse<\/p>\n

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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\u2014a large, map-like wool rug\u2014was physically burned by the artist using a welding torch, embedding the landscape\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Drawing from archival research and fieldwork, Cobelens collaborated with local farmers and environmental experts to better understand the land\u2019s ecological grief. By converting this research into design, Dryland<\/i> becomes both an artistic response and a call for reflection on the human and environmental consequences of a warming world. It\u2019s a woven warning that what burns today may not grow back tomorrow.<\/p>\n

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The First Digital Nation by Collider and The Monkeys, 2022 | image \u00a9 Collider<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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<\/i> forces viewers to confront the paradox of using cutting-edge technology to memorialize what we are failing to protect in the real world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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running through January 4, 2026, the showcase includes works by artists and designers from around the globe | image \u00a9 Pauline Assathiany<\/p>\n

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each artist engages with sensory experiences, ritual practices, and archival gestures to respond to the escalating environmental crisis | image \u00a9 Pauline Assathiany<\/p>\n

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Memo. Remembering the Futures is built on the idea that remembering is not just a look backward \u2013 but a way of looking forward | image \u00a9 Pauline Assathiany<\/p>\n

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project info:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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exhibition name: <\/strong>Memo. Remembering the Futures<\/a><\/p>\n

organization:<\/strong> Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell<\/a> | @fondationmartell<\/a><\/p>\n

concept & curatorship:<\/strong> d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet & Olivier Lacrouts)<\/a> | @we_are_dots<\/a>
\nscenography:<\/strong> Olivier Vadrot<\/a>
\ngraphic design:<\/strong> WIP office<\/a> | @wip.eu<\/a>
\nco-production:<\/strong> CID Grand-Hornu<\/a> | @cidgrandhornu<\/a><\/p>\n

artists: <\/strong>F\u00e9lix Blume (France), Emma Bruschi (France), Liselot Cobelens (Netherlands), Collider x The Monkeys (Australia),\u00a0 dach&zephir (France), Roberta Di Cosmo (Italy), Cian Dayrit & Cla Ruzol (The Philippines),\u00a0 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)<\/p>\n

dates: <\/strong>June 13, 2025 \u2013 January 4, 2026<\/p>\n

The post artists turn ecological grief into memory for \u2018memo. remembering the futures\u2019 exhibition<\/a> appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell: memo. remembering the futures \u00a0 At the Fondation d\u2019Entreprise Martell in Cognac, France, an exhibition titled \u2018Memo. Remembering the Futures\u2019 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/good-broker.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}