Lizzie Reid explores extreme heat and how it tests and reshapes the relationships between people, buildings, and nature. In this inherited infrastructure, many people are rethinking how to respond to rising temperatures — from opening up closed spaces to breaking up the concrete that burns in summer. Through encounters with workers, gardeners, and neighbours, she gathers insights into how heat is experienced and what people need in order to respond collectively. Conducting research in winter for an exhibition in June, the project acts as a kind of time capsule — creating messages and interventions now to be encountered as the heat rises.

Swati Devichi is gradually exploring the historical presence of female figures in the Belle de Mai neighborhood, learning about the Italian women who worked in the neighborhood’s factories, the midwives who studied at the maternity hospital next to La Friche, and the community of Sisters Victims of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus who lived cloistered in the convent for two centuries. At the same time, she is beginning to create double-exposure portraits, exploring the links between the neighbourhood’s current residents and spontaneous and chosen vegetation, while staying in the heart of the neighbourhood.