Growing up in the thrilling world of graffiti, I have had a profound fascination for my hometown Brussels, neglected neighborhoods and non-spaces. These deserted places often bear the mark of fellow creatives who share my interest in exploring and acknowledging these urban landscapes.

 

After 10 years of street art, I was arrested by the police with two of my friends for the first time. We had the brilliant idea to roam around the city the next day wearing fluorescent vests, carrying a pot of gray paint and some rollers. Our intention was to paint over all the graffiti and street art pieces we had created that night, in order to minimize the evidence and potentially receive a lighter punishment. Since that day, the ambivalence I felt around the moral legitimacy of graffiti became an inspiration for the rest of my oeuvre. I came to notice all the ways in which city governments get rid of graffiti, yet they fail to do so fully, leaving an inerasable, to me intriguing, residue. These unintentional pieces of misappropriated art remind me of the world of abstract expressionism and have thus become the starting point of my practice.