Mounir Eddib

Mounir Eddib (1995, Belgium) is a painter and mixed media artist who strives to rewrite history and empower the lives of marginalized communities as well as the landscapes to which they are connected. As the grandson of a miner and the son of an Amazigh (Berber) mother from the border region of the Western Sahara, his work is both autobiographical and universally relatable. It is driven by themes such as migration, solidarity, and the raw aesthetics of post-industrial landscapes.

Eddib also draws on the ritual and magical traditions of the Amazigh and the Sahrawi, giving his work a talismanic quality. He does this, among other things, through the use of traditionally protective materials such as lead, cedar tar, and indigo cloth. In addition to these ancestral influences, he collects industrial waste materials from abandoned mining sites in Limburg. He incorporates these materials into his artworks, thereby literally connecting them to specific places and histories. For example, he uses blast furnace slag as a powdered pigment for oil paint, and he incorporates broken clay bricks that once served as building materials for miners’ homes.