In Homo Desperatus, Dries Verhoeven transforms the museum into a living diorama of catastrophes. Forty-four display cases showcase meticulously crafted scale models of disaster sites, from a collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh to Guantanamo Bay and the destroyed Fukushima nuclear reactor. Each miniature landscape bears the marks of disaster, collapse, and human cruelty.

But the ruins are not empty. Each display case houses a colony of ants—over 70,000 in total—carrying out their daily routines with relentless precision: tirelessly digging through rubble, nesting in prison cells, and foraging across radioactive terrain. Tiny cameras embedded in the scale models transmit live images to a screen in the exhibition space, allowing visitors to zoom in and out: shifting between analytical distance and emotional engagement with the suffering of the human species, represented by the ants.

A peculiar intimacy emerges: visitors project compassion onto insects that remain entirely indifferent. As in Guilty Landscapes, Verhoeven interrogates how mediated images can cast subjects as victims without their consent. It reminds us how easily the camera can turn a catastrophe into spectacle, and how empathy is the result of projection.

The tireless diligence of the ants reflects how humans, sometimes with the courage born of despair, attempt to mitigate their suffering. Yet the contrast between ants and humans is also significant. Where humans despair, ants persevere: they are unburdened by ideology or fear, and the individual is effortlessly sacrificed for the survival of the species. By framing political and ecological crises through the lens of non-human resilience, Homo Desperatus offers an unexpected sense of hope: life always remains possible.

The once-inhabited display cases are now part of the permanent collection of the Verbeke Foundation (Kemzeke, Belgium). The video recording of the installation is currently presented independently.