Cultural Compass: Illumination at Atomium, exploration of nature and historical opera
Every Sunday, Belga English picks its favourite events from the cultural agenda. This week: Brussel's eye-catching monument lights up from within, nature and technology meet and spread like roots across the floors in Hasselt and La Monnaie presents an opera about the American tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York.
ROTONDE, ongoing, Atomium, Brussels
The Atomium in Brussels, long a symbol of innovation and scientific ambition, is being given fresh energy through a series of digital and immersive art installations. One of the highlights is ROTONDE, a permanent light and sound installation by Belgian studio Dirty Monitor that encircles the Atomium’s lower sphere. Strips of LED light follow the building’s curves, while vertical beams and a specially composed soundtrack create a fully immersive, 360-degree experience. Moving between moments of intensity and calm, the installation transforms the structure after dark, inviting visitors to see and hear this familiar landmark in a completely new way.
ROTONDE forms part of a wider artistic programme marking twenty years since the Atomium’s renovation. Other immersive works include Supply Chain, which uses mirrors, LEDs and sound to reflect on the hidden systems that power modern technology, and Nimbus, which turns the interior spaces into a glowing, dreamlike environment.
Together, these installations show how the Atomium continues to evolve. Rather than standing as a monument to the past, it becomes a living space for contemporary creativity.
Withering into breath, wetness undoes itself, until 12 April, Z33, Hasselt
This poetic and contemplative installation hovers between life and stillness. Rather than showing conventional artworks, Luca Vanello’s immersive environment brings visitors face-to-face with living materials and fragile forms that seem to exist in a quiet, ghost-like state.
Central to the exhibition is Vanello’s exploration of plant life when its most essential process, photosynthesis, is disrupted. By stopping plants from converting light into energy, he challenges the very conditions that sustain growth, leaving behind pale, translucent structures that are neither fully alive nor entirely gone. These fragile remnants sit alongside responsive materials drawn from biomedical research and 3D-printed elements, forming an intriguing bridge between the organic and the artificial.
Unlike typical museum displays, Withering into breath embraces changes in its environment. Z33 becomes a kind of micro-climate, with heat and humidity shaping Vanello’s algae-derived hydrogel sculptures over time. As these forms bend, twist and respond to the conditions around them, the installation becomes a living record of subtle interactions, reminding us how sensitive materials are to forces we often overlook.
In this quiet yet striking work, Vanello invites viewers to reflect on transformation, impermanence and fragile ties to the natural world, creating an exhibition that is both scientific in its curiosity and deeply poetic in its presence.
Fire in My Mouth, 27 February, La Monnaie, Brussels
Fire in My Mouth is a powerful and deeply moving oratorio by American composer Julia Wolfe that brings to the forefront the voices of women whose stories were long overlooked. Rather than a traditional concert, this staged performance combines choir, solo singers and orchestra to revisit a moment of major social upheaval in a collaboration between La Monnaie, the Belgian National Orchestra and the Vlaams Radio Koor.
The work centres on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York in 1911, when 146 garment workers, most of whom were young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, lost their lives after being trapped inside unsafe factory conditions. Wolfe gives these women a strong presence through music that blends fragments of testimony, protest chants and traditional Yiddish and Italian melodies with a driving, emotionally charged orchestral score.
The piece is divided into four parts: Immigration, Factory, Protest and Fire, and traces the arc of the workers’ experience from their hopes on arriving in America, the relentless pace of factory life, their growing calls for fair treatment and the tragedy that followed.
Ongoing events
Antwerp
Early Gaze: Unseen Photography from the 19th Century
Danial Shah: Becoming, Belonging and Vanishing
Magritte: La ligne de vie
Brussels
Loisirs-Plezier: Brussels 1920-1940
Fire
Ghent
Fairground Wonders
Marc De Blieck: Point de voir
Monique Gies: Inside Views
Hasselt
Rococo Reboot
Michael Beutler
Sint-Martens Latem
Edith Dekyndt
(MOH)
#FlandersNewsService | New digital art installations and the program for the 20th anniversary of its renovation, Friday 13 February 2026, in Brussels. ©BELGA PHOTO BENOIT DOPPAGNE
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