In Centrale | vitrine – a veritable ‘Christmas window’ for the occasion – Grégoire Motte stages a new version of L’apparition mythologique de Witloof. It’s about the birth, in the midst of the 1830 revolution, in a dark cellar in Schaerbeek, of the most contemporary and troubling of salads, and the delight of the farmer who discovers it, a veritable agricultural Pygmalion. This episode, drawn from a Belgian founding myth, forms the main element of the great chicory trilogy, a project initiated by Motte in 2019 with composer Gabriel Mattei. Grégoire Motte’s work is made up of stories that he presents in a variety of forms, combining visual work and literary practice. Historical episodes, personal adventures, real or invented myths become novels, lectures, films, musical pieces or objects with multiple statuses.