In this first solo exhibition of Mounir Eddib in the Netherlands, the artist reimagines his own lived experience of growing up in a working class neighborhood in the former coal mining town of Genk (Limburg, Belgium). Inspired by rappers such as Tupac as a young boy, he now takes this transatlantic street life connection to the next level.
Little Ghetto Boy is the title of a single by American soul legend Donny Hathaway (1945–1979). Hathaway powerfully evokes how it feels to grow up in “a ghetto”, a poor and often stigmatized area in which minority group members are concentrated because of societal pressures. He sings about how rough life can be, but also about believing in yourself, taking a stand, and making things change. “Everything has got to get better.”
Drawing on the writings of Black radical feminist bell hooks, the Little Ghetto Boy exhibition aims to bring the daily lives of descendants of people who migrated to work in the mines “from margin to center”. Genk was renowned for its youth gangs in the 1980s, and up to this day the city remains divided into districts linked to former mining sites. The exhibition not only creates bonds of solidarity with the Black struggle against racism and inequality, but also subtly interrogates how race, class and gender together shape human experience in multicultural communities on the eastside of the Atlantic. This remains a crucial issue as people from North African descent continue to be dehumanized and targeted as scapegoats in national politics.
Eddib’s work centers the humanity, dignity and strength of these misrepresented communities, but also their suffering. By portraying fragments of seemingly ordinary yet often unseen domestic scenes and street settings, he brings those at the margins to the centerstage. The result is an immersive, symbolically charged material assemblage. The gallery space is populated by house-like sculptures, evoking an urban neighborhood as well as issues of belonging and safety. Oil paintings layered with shimmering trajectories of melted tin, and dark ink drawings on paper infused with lead tell stories that go beyond harmful ghetto stereotypes.
Mounir Eddib is a Moroccan-Belgian painter and mixed media artist. While studying Fine Arts in Maastricht (2019–2024), he co-founded The Building / Genk, a diverse multidisciplinary artist collective. After three years as coordinator of Bonnefanten Museum’s youth department (2022–2025), he decided to focus on his personal career alongside his ongoing role as artistic director of The Building. As the grandson of a miner from the Western Saharan borderlands, his art is inspired by issues of belonging, the rawness of industrial landscapes and North African cosmologies.
Eddib was listed as this year’s “rising star” in the visual arts by leading newspaper NRC. He won four prizes in the two years since his graduation including the Buning Brongers Prize, and presented his first institutional solo Taliswoman at Z33 (Hasselt, BE). He recently participated in group shows such as We Live Here Too at Kasteel Wijlre Estate and The Roundness of Loss at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. His works have been included in the collections of Museum Voorlinden and the Bonnefanten, amongst others. He is regularly invited to speak about his practice, for instance by KANAL – Centre Pompidou (Brussels) and S.M.A.K. (Ghent).
