Michiel Wierinck

Michiel Wierinck (born 1997, Aalst) is a Belgian designer/visual artist. After studying ‘Master in industrial sciences: industrial design’ in Kortrijk, he returned to his hometown of Aalst to work as a designer of consumer industrial products. Pipes, smoke plumes, railways, sawtooth roofs everywhere in Aalst, he was confronted with the tension between industry and its surroundings. The infamous Amylum factory is the symbol of this. Every morning on his way to work, he sees the factory in the middle of town on the banks of the Dender, enveloped in its majestic plumes of smoke. There is something magical about it. A form of ugliness that can move him and make him think. Wierinck recognises in his surroundings the traces of structures that shape him invisibly. We often move like herd animals, guided and inhibited by habits, instinct, fear, ignorance, social expectations and underlying systems. In this, industry is both symbol and symptom. It is not only a source of inspiration, but also a mirror for the way we live, work and lose ourselves in what is normal. Wierinck’s work questions the extent to which we act freely within systems that we have built ourselves or that are imposed from outside – about who we are in relation to our environment and about our collective actions that these systems pass on unabated to future generations.