I miss you, home

The Netherlands is facing a housing shortage. As a consequence, a lot of its citizens have issues in finding suitable accommodation, and are affected by inappropriately high rental prices. Amongst them there are students, whose hope to build a better future is too often hindered by the failure of getting a basic human need – a place to live. Lacking sufficient social support, they hop from one friends’ couch to another, or reside in expensive hostels, suffering from emotional distress. In such precarious living, squatting becomes for some the solution.

The artworks research into the subculture of students occupying empty houses for living. When a basic need is not guaranteed, civil disobedience might take place as a way to confront systematic inadequacy. That is done in creative ways that, as the exhibition shows, put forward reflections on the execution of anti-squatting and vacant property laws.