Exhaure : Hors-service - 2026

Exhaure: H-S is a journey through the landscapes of flooded mines, through which we explore the invisible connections we maintain with the mines and the remnants of the industrial subsoil, which continue to exert their influence, silently, beneath our feet.

For the exhibition at the Musée Les Mineurs, a section of the neighbouring slag heap was moved to the museum’s forecourt to accommodate the installation. In this area, coal extraction relied for almost three centuries on a pumping process known as ‘exhaure’. Water, a fundamental element linking the geological strata to the landscapes and the myriad lives that unfold within them, is central to our journey. Since the cessation of dewatering, the waters have risen, seeped in, reshaped the landscape and threatened homes in a languid passage of time. These accumulated waters have given rise to artificial lakes that are toxic to our bodies, yet where flora and fauna are calmly adapting. What organic future awaits industrial facilities that are no longer in use? And what of those buried deep underground that are resurfacing on the slag heaps? These waters carry memories that emerge from the underground, yet are washed away as they flow into neighbouring rivers. Memories artificially preserved sometimes escape from the depths to reveal other facets of the same story.