For years, Andrej Kiripolsky has been following the slow dissolution of the Nováky Coal Power Plant – once the heart of his hometown. The community surrounding the plant at Nováky built their lives on this industry, but also suffered from its adverse effects. Now, after the closure of the plant, they are left with little economic stability, no clear future, and a physical environment that still holds the traces of what was extracted, burned and buried.

In Have You Ever Seen Coal Burn?, Kiripolsky weaves personal and industrial memory into a haunting spatial installation. At the original site, a network of pipes connected the plant to an ash pond, moving a mixture of water and ash through a system that was both functional and unstable. Now, the ash pond is buried, though still present underneath the surface, and these pipes are scattered throughout the village as ‘ruinalia’, detached from their original function. Alluding to this theatre of operations, a suspended, levitating pipe releases slow, rhythmic drips of water onto ash, its amplified echoes filling the space. Unlike the pipes in Nováky, this one is rendered in stainless steel, a speculative gesture to create a new narrative for this place. When wetted, the mound of ash – brought directly from the site in Slovakia – turns into smooth, industrial silt. This brown coal residue is made visible after being excavated from beneath the ground: a monument to the material residue that remains after decades of labour and environmental reckoning.

The installation, maintained daily, hangs in the same limbo zone as the region around Nováky – neither fully industrial nor fully transitioned into something else. In between industrial pasts and uncharted futures, we learn how energy and policy shifts affect the fabric of the communities left behind.