In August, artist Metincan Güzel will present his work in the Corner Room at Bureau Europa. In his artistic practice, Güzel explores how public spaces and urban scenography are produced and deployed as political instruments. His work often takes the form of inhabitable sculptures that provide space for a variety of public events and performances.
This presentation brings together works that come from an artistic research project on the closure of the Ford Genk factory in Limburg. The works focus on the period between the announcement of the closure in 2012 and the final shutdown in 2014, a time when waiting itself became active and political. During these two years, the workers did not simply wait. They created new ways of organising, negotiating, and acting together.
The presentation translates this history into a spatial installation, with the voices of a former trade union representative and a factory guard, together with metal screen prints that combine archive images and new drawings. Alongside this, a video installation creates a dialogue between the industrial struggle in Genk and the urban protests in Istanbul during the same period. The presentation does not see the closure as a final ending, but as a moment where new ways of building can emerge. Waiting becomes a time in which new alliances, memories, and political ideas take shape. Between stopped production and possible futures, the presentation asks the question: what do we build while waiting?
During his current residency at Jester in Genk, he presented several works as part of his long term research, What We Build While We Wait. For this project, he conducted artistic research into the closure of the Ford factory in Genk. His work and collaborations has previously been exhibited at Zuid Boijmans Van Beuningen, Z33, and Brutus Art Space. In 2025, Güzel was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.
Date 4 September untill 4 October 2026
Location Bureau Europa, platform voor architectuur en design
Admission free