Maëlle Dufour’s Capsule and Outre-Tombe bring an organic, introspective dimension tothe Botanique park. With kaleidoscopic reflective surfaces and dynamic light effects,these monumental works capture and transform their surroundings, creating a shiftingdialogue between nature and artifice. As night falls, they evolve—interacting with thefading daylight and the festival’s illuminations. This striking contrast invites visitors toslow down, pause, and immerse themselves in the flow of sound.
Maëlle Dufour creates monumental works that explore the evolution and memory of civilizations, balancing decadence and renewal. Using a combination of raw and recycled materials, she constructs immersive sculptural landscapes where past, present, and future converge. Straddling the line between archaeological remnants and dystopian visions, her work questions the traces left for future generations and theresilience of humanity.
Her art unfolds through a striking interplay of materials—clay, mud, bluestone, ceramics, waste, lead plates, rectangular mirrors, and vibrant red blown glass. It takes shape inmonumental ruins, lunar volcanic landscapes, and narrow watchtowers. The physicalencounter with her work is often unsettling; its sheer scale and weight, far exceeding human proportions, serve as a constant reminder of our own fragility and insignificance.
Through her sculptural installations, Dufour interrogates new technologies while drawing from the wealth of knowledge inherited from ancient societies. She challenges theorigins, memory, and history of our material world, situating her work at the thres hold of appearance and disappearance. Her art resonates with lived experiences—inevitablyfading with time. Beyond borders, stories, and cultures, she examines the impermanence of civilizations. Yet, within these cycles, she sketches a future wherehope and resilience endure.
The Hell'O collective takes over the glass roofs of the Rotonde, dressing the space witha vibrant graphic composition. By day, their colourful vinyls cast a brilliant light,transforming the interior of the room into a luminous fresco, while in the evening, thecolours projected onto the terraces of the Botanique extend this chromatic immersion.Their visual language, composed of dreamlike geometries, naturally complements themusical world, subtly weaving connections between sound and image.
Hell'O, the Brussels-based duo formed in 2008 by Jérôme Meynen and Antoine Detaille, creates works that blend painting, drawing, mural frescoes, and graphic design. Their art, where figuration and abstraction intertwine, plunges the viewer into a dreamlikeuniverse where humanity and nature meet, confront, and transform one another. Through anthropomorphic figures and surreal landscapes, they explore the relationshipbetween humans and their environment, creating works filled with symbolism and visual poetry.
Moving away from their graffiti origins, where they abandoned letters and spray paint tofocus on ink drawing, paper painting, and more recently sculpture and installations, Hell'O has developed a shared pictorial vocabulary that is both rich and complex. Their creative approach, marked by a unique freedom and a meticulous execution, brings tolife an imaginary and fertile world, sometimes grotesque but always imbued with poetry.Their works, depicting an odd bestiary populated by enigmatic animals and inhuman,asexual creatures, blend influences from the fantastic realm: from the iconography offairy tales and mythologies to esoteric symbols, vanities, and surrealism. These figuresare adorned with forms and symbols that evoke both cruelty and hope, death andfrivolity, failure and optimism.
Through short narrative sequences and a satirical touch, Hell'O tackles human weaknesses, combining metaphysical reflection and pure nonsense. Their compositions, oscillating between mystery and free interpretation, challenge certaintieswhile leaving ample space for the imagination. The very name of the duo, "Hell'O", 7embodies this duality: both joyful and macabre, amusing and frightening, sentimental and dreamy, morbid and alluring, absurd and meaningful – their work constantly plays with oxymorons and dichotomies. Between ambiguity and false pretences, it swings between attraction and repulsion, plunging the viewer into a paradoxically structured chaos.
Since 2014, La Vague Parallèle has been diving into emerging and alternative music scenes, capturing their raw energy through both words and images. After over a decade of documenting this creative explosion, the platform is now turning to its own archives, with an exhibition that celebrates a decade of documenting concerts at the Botanique.
Through the lens of La Vague Parallèle's photographers, the spaces of the Botanique will transform into a stage of emotions, evoking every performance that left a lasting imprint. This isn’t just a simple photo collection — it’s brought to life with text excerpts from the editorial team, preserving not only the performances themselves but also the spirit of the nights experienced.
The exhibition is also a tribute to the dedication of a passionate team who, working as volunteers, has committed to sharing their musical journey. By immersing the audience in these vibrant, yet personal, archives, this exhibition highlights a decade of music, blending words and photography, memory and immediacy.
