The utopian impulse allows us to escape the blinkers of the present and dream, telling stories about alternative futures that provoke important questions about the world in which we live. Artists and designers possess such critical, optimistic imaginations. They identify problems, and draw up plans that suggest how they could be approached. Such creative interventions inevitably carry a sense of social expectation.

At the Garden of Eden exhibition, the participating artists and designers are encouraged to show or create installations that interrogate the history of the utopian idea and engage with some of the fundamental issues faced by humanity, suggesting creative solutions, provoking change by suggesting inspiring or cautionary futures. Whether these visions are big or small, practical or hypothetical, together they will represent a laboratory of ambitious ideas that might, in their way, contribute to making the world a better place.

The visitors are invited to enter the imaginary and visionary worlds and minds of a selection of contemporary artists, designers and craftspeople. They will be tickled to engage and participate in new ways of thinking and acting and above all they will be stimulated to keep on dreaming and contributing to a better world.

Garden of Eden celebrates the capacity of human beings to imagine, to dream and to create. We all accept ‘nature’ as the perfect concept for living in harmony. It is a positive story that connects history with the present and the future. Is longing for a better world a utopian thought, or can we achieve it by participating all together in creating it? This exhibition wants to show the visitors how important it is to dream and imagine. It is an open invitation to share ideas and thoughts towards a better future.

Garden of Eden is an exhibition project within the wider framework of Utopia celebrating imaginative proposals in the quest for a future Paradise. On this occasion, the curatorial collaboration between Siegrid Demyttenaere (DAMN°) and Sofie Lachaert (atelier lachaert dhanis) turns the diverse, peripheral districts of Wazemmes and Moulins into artistic laboratories, where ambitious future-oriented ideas interact and where valuable prospects are dreamt up, planned and visualised.

Thoroughly questioning the status quo, they create an exceptional trajectory through the work of six artists, inviting the public to reflect, create and help shape the image of an approaching future while exploring a lost paradise. Starting with Wazemmes, inside the former spinning mill, the prominent and socially engaged artist Joana Vasconcelos (PT) makes her otherworldly universes accessible to the public, immersing them in monumental landscapes of surprising shapes, textures, and rhythms. Her luminescent night flower field, titled Jardin d’Eden, makes for an unequalled experience and encourages us to (continue to) dream.

In Maison Folie in Moulins, a former brewery, the public is invited to think about what utopia is or can be, guided by an updated giant Wheel of Fortune by Mathieu Frossard (FR). Inside the building, the hallway and the corridors are the support for impressionistic, immersively monumental wall-covering drawings by the illustrator Peter Van den Ende (BE). They provide a visual pathway leading the audience to the olfactory installation by Peter de Cupere (BE), reminiscent of a glorious and pure forest while subtly acknowledging its antithesis.

In the ‘tower’, there is a utopian atmospheric setting with the ceramic ‘moss people’ of sculptor Kim Simonsson (FI) and an impressive composition of cacti that turns the world literally and figuratively upside down by Cyril Lancelin (FR). Some artists of the Garden of Eden can also be discovered in other spots in Lille — Joana Vasconcelos’ Valkyries in the main train station, a giant version of Kim Simonsson’s ‘moss people’ on the ‘Rambla’, and in the Eglise Madeleine, the amazing scents of Peter de Cupere’s work.

Audiences are also invited to take part in co-creative processes through a program of workshops. This participatory dimension involves engaging young and diverse local residents in cultural production and participation, such as assisting Vasconcelos in executing a handcrafted monumental work.

LOCATIONS