I miss you, home


is a collaborative art project that tackles the housing crisis in The Netherlands. It researches into the subculture of students squatting empty houses for living.

Ben Maier
Dario di Paolantonio
Lina Selg

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I miss you, home


is a collaborative art project that tackles the housing crisis in The Netherlands. It researches into the subculture of students squatting empty houses for living.

Ben Maier
Dario di Paolantonio
Lina Selg


Write us an Email



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.
Exhibitions and conversations ︎
National Conference for student housing (2022)
Exhibition as part of the event
Commissioned by Gemeente Den Haag
Nieuwe Kerk, Den Haag

Presentation for Alderman Martijn Balster (2022)
Visual research into the housing crisis
Conversation in Den Haag


Piep Knars Krijs Kraak (2022)
Exhibition
Comissioned by Hotel Mokum
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I miss you, home (2021)
Exhibition
Commissioned by Student & Stad

Royal Academy of Art, The Hague

D66: How can art influence politics? (2021)
Video presentation
Commissioned by D66
I miss you home - squatting as a consequence of the housing crisis. Den Haag

Conversation: Task force student housing (2021)
Squatting as a consequence of the housing crisis
Den Haag





Works ︎

Home sweet hole 

Framed photographs showing the students’ life inside various squatted houses. With an intimate visual language, these pictures present living situations that are not imaginable for most people.




The Oude Haagweg case

A documentary about the curious case of an attempt to squat a giant building. This work includes a documentary video, online research, self-made tools and photographs.




Portraits and stories

Large scale portraits of squat residents and terrible stories about student housing that we collected.




A squatting story

Documentation and diary entries of a night dedicated to squatting. Reconstruced story, visualized with photographs and handwritten text on red paper. 




Cats and courtcases

Various collected documents (mails, verdicts, etc.) and cat pictures that were taking during ‘house-sitting’.




Souvenirs for the landlord

Objects left in a squat that got evicted within 72 hours after the verdict. Shown as dias with an old dia projector.




Table of curiosities 

Legal forms, court evidence, lockpicking tools and communication with neighborhood.  




Exhibition guide

Letters sent to a missing dear house, from house seekers, with love.





Resources ︎
Podcast ‘I miss you, home’



The exhibition is an exploratory experience where people can come to understand parts of what it means to have an alternative way of housing.”


Exhibition ‘I miss you, home’ shows dire situation student housing

“It is with great pride that we announce the photo and video exhibition ‘I miss you, home’. [The artists] have put together a remarkable exploratory experience around the theme of student housing and squatting.”


Photo exhibition: I miss you, home

“By analyzing the practice of squatting from a philosophical and anthropological perspective, the lecture will address the way we think about living spaces and the role of bureaucracy in shaping our understanding of it.”


Working on student housing in The Hague

‘’Together, we can face the problem and find a solution’’





Artists ︎
Image by Floris Meijer


Lina Selg
is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller. Interested in the outer edges of society, she documents the lives and realities of those painfully affected and neglected by the social and political structures of our society.

Dario di Paolantonio
tackles philosophical questions by inquiring into contemporary issues, focusing on media landscapes and the worlds beyond humans.

Ben Maier
frames his photographic practice as a visual economist. His explorations via photography are rooted in the nefarious and uneven aspects of neoliberalism that clash with an equitable future