Memo. Remembering the Futures – Exhibition now open

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• EXHIBITION •

MEMO. REMEMBERING THE FUTURES x FONDATION MARTELL

Dear friends,

We’re delighted to announce that Memo. Remembering the Futures is now open to the public at Fondation Martell in Cognac, France, and will run until 4 January 2026.

A co-production of Fondation Martell and the Belgian museum CID Grand-Hornu, Memo is a touring exhibition that explores how memories can serve as tools for transmission, resistance, and transformation in a time marked by ecological breakdown and cultural erasure. It brings together a constellation of artists and designers whose practices attend to what is vanishing: endangered species, disappearing landscapes, fading gestures, fractured traditions. Their works propose alternative ways of archiving, sensing, and remembering, inviting us to reconsider not only what we preserve, but how and why.

Far more than an exhibition, Memo has been conceived as a platform for dialogue and exchange. Over the next seven months, it will be continuously activated through a vibrant public programme of workshops, performances, talks, and events – each one opening up new sensory and intellectual pathways into the questions at hand. Visitors are warmly invited to take part in this collective inquiry, and to engage with practices of care, mourning, and repair – practices that feel increasingly vital as we navigate an age of profound transformation.

We hope you’ll join us in Cognac to experience the exhibition and its unfolding programme.

Warm wishes,

Laura & Olivier

Introduction

In his book In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust reflects on the nature of memory, describing it as an embodied, sensory experience where a small trigger, like the taste of a madeleine, can suddenly evoke the past. Proust suggests that what is gone persists not only in our minds but also in the objects and sensations around us, highlighting how our identities are closely tied to the environments we live in. Yet, in the face of the ongoing human-induced climate crisis, the sensory connections that once bound us to these environments and their non-human inhabitants are gradually fading, sometimes irreversibly: landscapes ravaged by fire, submerged territories, species extinction... In this context, how can we preserve and transmit what is vanishing or already lost? How can we repair broken bonds from the past and navigate toward new possible futures? Amid the anxiety and ecological grief triggered by these disappearances and transformations, Memo. Remembering the Futures showcases artists and designers whose works function as acupuncture points in the larger body of ecological discourse. Their interventions are militant, critical, and timely. Whether by caring for lost species, preserving gestures and memories, or crafting new forms of material knowledge, their works stimulate all our senses, and remind us that resistance through care is one of the gentlest yet most powerful and fertile options we have.

Featured artists & designers: Félix Blume / Emma Bruschi / Liselot Cobelens / Collider x The Monkeys / dach&zephir / Roberta Di Cosmo / Cian Dayrit & Cla Ruzol / Alexis Foiny / Suzanne Husky / Simone Kenyon & Lucy Cash / Fernando Laposse / Sally Ann McIntyre / Neve Insular / Bubu Ogisi & I A M I S I G O / Yesenia Thibault-Picazo

Galleries & institutional lenders: Art Jameel, Dubai / Friedman Benda Gallery, New York City / Galerie Alain Gutharc, Paris / Institut national de l’audiovisuel, Bry-sur-Marne / Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris / National Theatre of Scotland, Glasgow / Nome Gallery, Berlin

Concept & curation

d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet & Olivier Lacrouts)

Scenography

Olivier Vadrot w/ Rafaël Têtedoie

Visual identity & graphic design

WIP Office w/ Emma Burel

Texts

d-o-t-s

Co-production

Fondation Martell & CID Grand-Hornu

DOWNLOADS

Exhibition views* / Exhibition booklet / Press release

* HD files & additional photos upon request

Acknowledgements

Anne-Claire Duprat, Director, Fondation Martell

Marie Pok, Director, CID Grand-Hornu

Fondation Martell's team Maxime Heylens, Elisabeth Ricard, Mathilde Rouyau, Julien Lefrançois, Louise Buratti, Alix Poulin, Juliette Nosland, Claire Bodin, Chloé Fougère

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Translations Catherine Lallemand

Partner Fedrigoni

Service Providers Atelier Olivier Vadrot, Chenue, Collectif Cartel, De facto, Diot SA, Dogman, Embelco, Hiscox, Maillet Multiservices, Média Graphic, Studio Ludo

d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts)

www.studiodots.eu • [email protected] • @we_are_dots
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