from 10 February to 8 December 2024
Kasimir Zgorecki
The Cité des Électriciens was home to many families between 1861 and 2013. In the 1920s and 1930s, many came from Poland to join the ranks of the miners, earning Bruay its nicknames of ‘Polish Capital’ or ‘Little Polish Rome’. Kasimir Zgorecki was part of this diaspora. Predestined for the mines, he forced fate and became a professional photographer. Based in Rouvroy, his studio was very popular with Poles. His magnificent black and white portraits immortalise the Poles and their traditions.
from 8 May to 8 December 2024
The space of things
Since 2015, Diane Marissal and Jérémie Leblanc-Barbedienne have formed a duo where the literary and artistic influences of one mingle with the advertising culture of the other. As devotees of pure form, they never stop putting life into geometry, giving it purity and impact, contrasts and sparkles. Their works, never totally abstract, find an echo in our intimate and collective memories. Here, their reduced colour palette reveals domestic objects in a new light.
from 16 September to 8 December 2024
Aequo – Echoes – Eco
Aequo.design is a creative studio that takes a territorial approach to design. The designers, Tim Defleur and Arthur Lenglin, create objects which, over and above their functional and aesthetic values, are intended to bear witness to the heritage they describe. Through its eponymous brand, aequo.design offers a collection of objects for the home evocative of its native region: Hauts-de-France. The design duo hand-make their creations using local materials and recycling waste from mass-produced products.
from 20 September to 8 December 2024
Chromophore
‘En Creux’ is the culmination of the work of the four artists hosted in residence at the Cité des Électriciens as part of the photographic commission launched in 2022 to mark the 40th anniversary of the CRP/Centre Régional de la Photographie. For a year, Clément Brugger, Isabella Hin, Hideyuki Ishibashi and Apolline Lamoril explored the area and its memory. Opting for different emblematic aspects of the Bassin Minier, each of them used innovative and experimental forms to explore the history of the area and its people.
from 21 September to 8 December 2024
Heritage in motion: building a sustainable future.
The Cité des Électriciens is the tourist gateway to an area that has been recognised as a living, evolving cultural landscape by UNESCO, and is an emblematic everyday monument of the coalfields of northern France. Rehabilitated by Philippe Prost, Jennifer Didelon and the FORR agency, the oldest colliery in the Pas-de-Calais has been redesigned as a living neighbourhood, combining gardens, exhibition spaces, artists’ residences and gîtes – all spaces that invite us to think differently about how we live in the Cité and the world after coal…
from 21 September to 8 December 2024
Bio-TEX
The exhibition showcases the work done to create hygrothermal curtains for the renovation of mining estates. The project, carried out with the residents of the Cité d’Orient in Harnes, was led by 20 students from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et du Paysage in Lille, with technical support from the About a Worker collective. This experiment is part of the International Post Mining Network, an association set up in 2022 in the coalfields of northern France, which brings together more than 30 partners from all over the world. It is part of the ‘Mining Towns in Acclimatisation’ initiative.
from 21 September to 8 December 2024
Alice Hallynck – From the traditional brise-bise to the monumental curtain-gallery
In its historic birthplace in the North of France, architect and town planner Alice Hallycnk has reinterpreted the macramé windbreak curtain in architectural terms. This embroidered curtain has been transformed with new motifs, opening up our imaginations and questioning the aesthetics of our everyday suburban landscapes.
