Mounir Eddib

°1995, Genk, Belgium.
Lives and works in Genk, Belgium.

Mounir Eddib is a Moroccan-Belgian painter and mixed media artist born in Waterschei (Genk, Belgium), a diverse working class neighborhood known for its nearby decommissioned coal mines. As the grandson of a miner and the son of Amazigh (Berber) parents from the Western Saharan borderlands, his autobiographical art is inspired by issues of migration and belonging, the rawness of post-industrial landscapes, and the transformative potential of North African cosmologies. Through the lens of his family context he centers the bodies of exploited people, manifesting as ancestral spirits. Eddib draws on Amazigh and Sahrawi ritual practices to imbue his art with talismanic properties, especially through the use of traditionally protective substances such as lead, tar and indigo cloth. In addition, he also utilizes industrial waste materials such as blast furnace slag from Limburgian mining hills to physically connect his artworks to these sites.