TEEN SPIRIT by Belgian photographer Vincen Beeckman is an artistic project run in collaboration with teenagers from Charleroi, Belgium. From the youth centre of “La Broc” to the mechanical workshop of the Université du Travail as well as the medical-educational institute Le Phénix and Decathlon’s basketball court, the city and its surroundings become a playground to experience friendship and heartbreaks, feel the thrill of adventure, dream big and overcome failure.

The resulting publication, commissioned by the BPS22 Art Museum of the Hainaut Province as part of its eponymous collective exhibition taking place from from 12.02 to 22.05/2022 and co-published by IC Visual Lab, features texts by artist and writer Sunil Shah and curator Nancy Casielles.

These young people, on the cusp of adulthood, are on the threshold between recent school education and the prospect of work. It is at this liminal stage of life that dreams are imagined and if the right conditions allow, these dreams might be fulfilled. Despite all the hurdles, exclusion, lack of opportunities that will be met every day, at this stage of life they exude a magic which will sustain them, inhabiting their own ecosystem and relying heavily on each other for support. It is a passion for life, for friends, for desires, for the present, unburdened by the weight of the past or the anxieties of the future. Sunil Shah

BIO

Vincen Beeckman. Born in 1973 in Brussels, Belgium. Lives and works in Brussels. Vincen Beeckman is a «creator of a protean work » (Jean-Marc Bodson, 2018). His work is exhibited in Belgium (FOMU, ISELP, Wiels, Bozar, Central for Contemporary Art, Foundation A, Galerie Eté 78, Gallery A), and across Europe, especially in Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Italy and Latvia. Vincen Beeckman is an unconventional photographer. He is a performer, an actor of photography, he develops photographic projects involving the local population: he exhibits in public spaces or distributes disposable cameras to migrants. He makes pictures «with people, all people. (...) without worrying about reproducing a style, or even less, to conform to the labels of contemporary art » (J-M Bodson).