Onkruid

Onkruid shows the mental and physical imprint left behind by the journey made by myself and many others through the community in a now long gone squatted building (FiNiX) in Hasselt. A building that served as a homebase for people and projects with deep socio-cultural and anticapitalistic roots, in which I cooperated and sometimes lived for about 2 years, until its end in 2020, when the building was auctioned after 13 years of occupancy.

A home for all who needed an escape from modern society and its ever increasing pressure on people. FiNiX was a place where arts, music, cooking, social initiatives and gatherings and many more things could take place outside of a (financially) controlled environment. A place filled with people who sought freedom and an escape from this controlled environment through their initiatives, actions and statements. The photographs aim to capture the little hidden, sometimes poetic details that made FiNiX as it was. They show hints of this escapism and the self-sustaining community that lived there, and how I and many others struggling with themselves and finding a place in society found a purpose and feeling of belonging FiNiX, where we were all one.

Link to book