Investigating forces of nature beyond our control, this exhibition cycle focuses on man-made disasters, addressing the immediacy of climate change and the threat of nuclear explosions, and on amplifying critical messages and voices. Red-hot, urgent, as if about to combust, four separate exhibitions are brought together to create a burning Ring of Fire, drawing up an unexpected constellation of international artists reunited for the first time: French Swiss Julian Charrière, Russian-born American Ebecho Muslimova, Spanish Ana Montiel and collective exhibit Artists Against the Bomb organized by Estudio Pedro Reyes.

Each exhibition within this chapter echoes one of the four main types of combustion: slow, rapid, spontaneous and explosive. From dizzying to contemplative, Julian Charrière’s exhibition addresses the pressing dangers of a rapid combustion due to climate change, by notably exploring the delirium of industrialization and its collusion with non-renewable resources. Ebecho Muslimova and her burlesque, signature female character Fatebe takes over the walls of LagoAlgo, exploding its architecture, with walls that can barely contain her presence, like a spontaneous female combustion. In a spirit of explosive protest and outrage, Artists Against the Bomb brings together hundreds of artist-designed posters, both historic and newly commissioned, which call for universal nuclear disarmament to generate imperative, urgent change and achieve peace. Meanwhile, Ana Montiel’s vibrant masses perform a kind of synesthesia, painting with air the factors we often overlook—the things we don't consider. In the manner of a slow combustion, emanating like flameless heat, she reconciles the liminal and the tangible, the eternal and ephemeral, the monumental and the microscopic, the natural and the cultural.

Jérôme Sans, Creative Director