The Fire We Keep

13 artists from OFFO working across distinct practices present their works The Fire We Keep 15th - 17th May, 2026Sigarenfabriek, Delft What does it mean to gather in unstable times? In times of social fragmentation, exhaustion, and increasing individualization, being together can no longer be taken for granted. To gather, to remain present, to share space with openness and vulnerability have become difficult practices, shaped by effort rather than certainty. Again and again, we are asked to reconfigure how we live, how we remain connected, and how we make space for one another. This exhibition begins from that condition. Thirteen artists come together from separate trajectories, each carrying their own ways of seeing, making, and inhabiting the world. Their works enter into relation and, by remaining exposed to one another, form a temporary constellation shaped by proximity, exchange, interruption, and contrast. What emerges is not unity, but the possibility of encounter: a condition in which vulnerabilities can be shared, and in which one may come to know both others and oneself. Unfolding over the course of three days, the exhibition is built, inhabited, and then taken apart. What is shared here is not identity, but rather the difficult and necessary work of coexisting. As with a fire that must be tended to in order to keep burning, whatever is shared asks to be sustained through care, return, and commitment. The Fire We Keep gives shape to this condition, evoking a form of relation built not through permanence, but through the quiet persistence of coming back. In this sense, the fire is also a promise that one returns once more, bearing one’s own world, to place it for a while beside those of others. find out more about the collective on : offocollective.com