Yannick Jacquet, Parallel Future(s)

© Yannick Jacquet / Futur(s) Parallèle(s) / mixed technics / 2024

Between 14 November 2024 and 2 February 2025, the Greenhouses will play host to Futur(s) Parallèle(s), the new site-specific exhibition by visual artist Yannick Jacquet. The starting point of this project is a reassessment of the artist’s fascination with dystopian narratives, prompted by the question: “Has the fetishisation of decadence that pervaded pop culture over decades affect our ability to imagine the future?” It would indeed appear that the announced disaster is an inescapable mental horizon. It seems more “reasonable” now to imagine a post-apocalyptic world rather than a post-capitalist future. 

Drawing inspiration from the architectural and historical setting of the Botanique Greenhouses, the artist invites visitors on a reflective stroll through a set-up designed to resemble a giant diorama. False grottoes, artificial ruins, and mock waterfalls – elements epitomising the garden designs of the Romantic period – are reinterpreted and confronted with elements borrowed from cyberpunk, video games, and science fiction. Historical references and contemporary visual codes interweave. Futur(s) Parallèle (s) draws connections between periods of great upheaval resulting from human activity: the Industrial and the Digital revolutions. Beyond a play of contrasts, the installation serves as a distorting mirror of our future-oriented vanities. 

Yannick Jacquet invites us to reconsider our narratives outside the realms of decadence and eschatological visions by questioning our fetish for ruins. With great compassion and humour, his work can be understood as an invitation to collectively devise desirable alternative futures, relieved of the weight of our anxieties.