In Fossil Fuel Mnemosyne Miriam Sentler seeks to review the importance of myth as a tool that is used by capitalist branding methods and at the same time to challenge them. In the framework of Petromelancholia, the tapestries can also be understood as a speculative future means of memorializing fossil modernity. By using the medium of tapestry, Sentler refers to the tradition of tapestries to depict myths and stories with educational purposes and political overtones. Fossil fuels have long been attributed to mythical or even magical properties. The first tapestry in this series, Oil & Myth, was woven in 2021 in the TextielLab at TextielMuseum Tilburg, NL. It was inspired by residencies in oil extraction areas in Norway and Scotland. The research for the new tapestry, Coal & Myth, started in 2022 during a residency in the old coal town of Genk (BE), during which Sentler researched the coal and lignite industry of Germany, Limburg and Belgium. During this research, Sentler again found many myths corresponding with present-day political and environmental problems. The tapestry, commissioned by Brutus for Petromelancholia, was again manufactured at and in cooperation with the TextielLab and shown for the first time during the exhibition Petromelancholia at Brutus in Rotterdam, together with the earlier tapestry, in a diptych. Working with manual and digital methods and starting with a montage of pastel drawings, Sentler drew on her previous experience in the TextielLab and further developed the method she developed at the time.

The history of coal is peppered with mythical references: from the patron saint Barbara, who is said to have been freed from a tower by a thunderbolt, to the subterranean myths of Orpheus, Lethe, the devil and the goat riders, hell and the Norse underworlds. Nowadays, coal is not free of myth: newly developed business parks built on the premises of old coal shafts are named after mythical heroes such as Thor and the architectural shape of viewing platforms over excavation sites are derived from the Colossus of Rhodes. Inspired by a cacophony of mythical stories deriving from European culture, Sentler presents a rich iconography of characters and symbols that fuse coal and myth throughout time. The iconography is loosely inspired by the Mnemosyne Atlas by art historian Aby Warburg (1925-), who researched collage and classical imagery to understand the permeation of myths in different time layers and contexts.