In her autobiographical memoir My Mother Laughs, artist and film director Chantal Akerman chronicles her daily life plagued by illness and the unraveling of a love story. She recounts that, during dinner, she was struck by a sudden burst of vitality, a "need to laugh in the midst of the impending catastrophe. Laughing on a volcano." The premise of this exhibition sprouted from this cry of joy in the face of ominous predictions. Laughter is portrayed as a reaction of wonder at the power of fire, a reversal of power dynamics, an absurd stance in light of the disproportionate impact of our species on Earth's systems.

The figure of the volcano conjures up the imagination of an imminent collapse, while also embodying a sensual geological aesthetic and highlighting the fragility of human time. Like Athanasius Kircher's “central fire” theory, which speculates on the insides of the globe, Laughing on a Volcano explores the materiality of these raw elements: volcanic rock, sand, clay, coal, limestone concretions and mineral voices. It embarks on a journey into the depths of mines, the intensity of a magnetic field, to the edge of a crater, or in contact with a meteorite.