Lara Almarcegui – La Montagne de feu, 2026

Coal from Saint-Étienne powered Lyon’s metal industry and left behind sixty waste heaps, known locally as terrils or crassiers. Lara Almarcegui treats these relatively recent landforms as both material and legal subjects. In La Montagne de feu (“The Mountain of fire”), 260 cubic metres of shale from Terril SaintPierre form an artificial landscape. Its colour comes from residual coal that burned within the heap, baking the surrounding rock and turning it red. Presented in bulk, the material reflects how ground is extracted, transformed and assigned value for construction. At the same time, Lara Almarcegui has filed applications for scientific exploration permits for Crêt de la Faye and Terril du Fay. The permits allow her and geologists from Mines Saint-Étienne to analyse the heaps until 2030. French mining law does not clearly account for waste accumulated above ground. It thus remains unresolved whether these formations constitute land, waste or a resource; who owns what they contain; and who may determine their future.

Lara Almarcegui’s practice interrogates urban environments, focusing on construction sites, vacant land and the material composition of cities. Through sustained engagement with each city and context in which she works, she reveals the economic, geological and institutional forces that shape the built environment.