About this event
Among the archives gathered for Earth Not a Globe, a project initiated in 2016 and still ongoing, artist Philippe Braquenier uncovers a little-known story: the existence of a Flat Earth community established in Evere for more than a century. Through previously unseen local archival images, the exhibition sheds light on the traces of this singular community while exploring the persistence of belief, the construction of narratives, and the shifting boundaries between facts, convictions, and collective imagination. Philippe Braquenier is fascinated by knowledge, particularly the ways it is collected, used, shared and stored. His work explores our obsession with processing information at a time when data have become increasingly ubiquitous yet increasingly invisible. Through a restrained and detached approach, he connects these ideas to broader questions surrounding evolution, heritage and the fragile nature of the digital revolution. After earning a bachelor's degree in photography from HELB, he worked in advertising until 2016. Since then, his work has been exhibited at the Aperture Foundation in New York, the Belgian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale, and the JIMEI x ARLES photography festival, among other institutions and galleries. His work has been featured in international publications, and he was a finalist for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award in 2020. Earth Not a Globe takes its title from an influential book devoted to one of the most extreme conspiracy theories: the belief that the Earth is flat rather than spherical. Developed by Samuel Birley Rowbotham in the late nineteenth century, this doctrine continues to attract a large international community of followers. For this project, Philippe Braquenier examines the discursive mechanisms of conspiracy theories by investigating a series of Flat Earth claims through the lens of his own experience. Adopting the methods of Rowbotham's followers, he creates images that reproduce a similar empirical experience. By manipulating, fragmenting and altering his photographs, he produces seemingly "scientific"—almost forensic—evidence. Removed from their original context and accompanied by brief captions, these images could lead viewers to question the Earth's rotation or even the existence of gravity. Yet one crucial detail remains: the artist deliberately leaves visible traces of his interventions, revealing the constructed nature of the images. By combining the visual language of documentary photography with an openly subjective approach, he critically questions both conspiracy rhetoric and the conventions that shape photographic perception. In the age of post-truth and globalised information, his work ultimately offers a critical reflection on our relationship with images and their potential power to spread conspiracy theories.
