Online Catalogue

Press:
Away From Basel’s Main Halls, June Art Fair Holds Its Own, in the Observer, June 2025

JUNE Art Fair
Riehenstrasse 90B
4058 Basel, Switzerland
16 - 22 June 2025

We are honoured to debut with a solo presentation by Benjamin Francis at JUNE Art Fair 2025, in Basel, Switzerland.

This fair is kindly supported by the Mondriaan Fonds.

ONLINE CATALOGUE

Press:

Review on Intsomi in Metropolis M, by Karmen Samson, May 2025
On Intsomi in ZAM Magazine, by Bart Luirink, June 2025

22.05.2025 - 06.07.2025

Opening Thursday May 22nd from 5 - 8 pm
Location: NMAG, Bos en Lommerweg 88 and NMAG KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 Amsterdam.

No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present Intsomi, the third solo exhibition by Buhlebezwe Siwani with the gallery. Siwani’s multidisciplinary practice ‒ spanning performance, photography, video and installation ‒ interrogates the patriarchal framing of the Black female body and experience within and beyond the South African context. As a Sangoma, she centres her work on ritual and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality. 

In a present shaped by a rightward political shift that increasingly demonstrates resistance to historical reckoning and cultural inclusion, Intsomi offers an alternative narrative to divisive political rhetoric around race and migration. Buhlebezwe Siwani invites us to confront history not as a past, but as a living force carried in the body, land, and spiritual realm. 

In Xhosa, 'intsomi' means ‘tale,’ ‘legend,’ and ‘myth’ in story form, a word that resonates with the layered, inherited narratives Siwani seeks to reclaim. The eponymous sculptural flags Instomi (2025), hung throughout the exhibition, act as visual markers. Once red, white, and blue, they have been dredged and soaked in raw materials and spices. Here, past and present converge in acts of memory, resistance, and transformation.

The intersection of memory and myth materialises in the work Rhaxa Rhaxa (2025). Three hand carved stones, traditionally used in rural African communities for food preparation, become living archives for the artist; vessels of continuity ‒ objects that echo ancestral presence. Rhaxa Rhaxa is also an onomatopoeia: a word evoking the sound of something dragged along ‒  a weight, a lineage, a history that insists on being carried. 

In Sara (2025) and Sojourner (2025), Siwani imagines Sojourner Truth, the African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist ‒ not as subject of spectacle or distant memory, but as a woman returning home. In Izithunzi (2025), Siwani places her own body within the historical architecture of the Oost-Indisch Huis / Bushuis, former headquarters of the VOC, surrounded by colonial artefacts. Dressed in traditional Xhosa attire adorned with cowrie shells and beads, her presence physically interrupts the colonial narrative, staging a quiet resistance within a space marked by exploitation.  

Just as Rhaxa Rhaxa carries the traces of remains, the paintings and photographs animate what has been displaced, asking what it means to reclaim both space and (hi)story. A similar gesture extends into the earlier work Amagugu (2022), shown in the gallery’s mezzanine. In this video installation, Siwani appropriates Renaissance chiaroscuro to reimagine the Black body within a Western visual language. With a powerful gaze, Siwani’s subjects assert their presence in the canon.

Moving between the spiritual and the political, the intimate and the historical, Buhlebezwe Siwani creates a language of return ‒ one that refuses erasure and insists on presence. Intsomi ultimately gestures toward healing; not through forgetting but through the act of reimagining.

The opening of the exhibition will take place during Amsterdam Art Week, on Thursday May 22nd at 5PM, across both No Man’s Art Gallery (Bos en Lommerweg 88-90) and NMAG KIOSK (Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327). For more information, visit nomansart.com or email info@nomansart.com

Exhibition overview of I Hit You With a Flower — sugar-coated art with a punch at MABA, France. Photo by Aurélien Mole

We are honored to announce that Alan Hernández are be part of the exhibition I Hit You With a Flower – sugar-coated art with a punch at MABA, France. This eye-catchingly sweet exhibition celebrates diversity in society, taking back the power of ‘girly art’ through a glamorous presentation of vibrant colours, gold, glitter, flowers, and other motifs.

Curated by Nanda Janssen.

More information at MABA.

Installation views of the exhibition Reverie at EDJI Gallery in Brussels, BE. Photos by Sylvia Cappelari

We are delighted to announce the opening of Reverie, a new solo exhibition by Marilyn Sonneveld at EDJI Gallery in Brussels. This exhibition presents her latest abstract-figurative paintings in dialogue with glass sculptures that explore themes of intimacy, personal memory, and the tension between presence and absence.

Please find further information here.

Online Catalogue

Press:
A correction of the norm, in Art Rotterdam article, March 2025

ART ROTTERDAM
Solo/Duo Section
Booth D10
27 - 30 March 2025

We are thrilled to present a duo presentation by Benjamin Francis and Tobias Thaens on the solo/duo section of Art Rotterdam 2025.

Photos by Jonathan de Waart

We are honoured to share that Sam Samiee will be curating and presenting works at the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen, NL.

In 2018 Sam Samiee won the Wolvecamp Prize, the exhibition offers a contemporary insight of Wolvecamp’s legacy, bridging work of Theo Wolvecamp and with that of Sam Samiee.

Please find further information here.

Photos courtesy of Museum Cobra and Fabian Landewee

online catalogue

Press:

Exhibition highlight on saliva.live, March 2025

A correction of the norm, in Art Rotterdam article, March 2025

22.03.2025 - 27.04.2025

Opening Saturday March 22nd from 5 - 8 pm

For his debut solo exhibition with the gallery, Benjamin Francis sought to create a space filled with windows, fences, and thresholds that function as both portals to another realm and barriers that exclude. They are more than mere architectural forms; they embody the contradictions of boundaries, shaping access while simultaneously denying it.

A Foot Between the Door is an act of staking a claim. Literally translated from a Dutch saying, it is used to assert presence in spaces that exclude, whether through physical barriers or institutional structures. It stands for the negotiation required to inhabit and navigate spaces where identity is regulated, challenged or contested. 

A work that pauses the visitor upon entering the exhibition space is The Smell of Boundaries (2025), a large-scale installation that explores the visceral, almost instinctual response one has to dirt and cleanliness. Dirt is something one is conditioned to be repulsed by, not necessarily through rational understanding, but through deep-seated social and biological instincts. Cleanliness is more than hygiene; it is a ritual that purifies a space, setting it apart from dirt and contamination. This distinction is not only physical but also symbolic.

In The Right to Opacity, the writer and poet Édouard Glissant rejects rigid borders, seeing them as fluid and liminal spaces of exchange. The Smell of Boundaries (2025) echoes this idea, where decay defies containment, seeping through divisions. Dirt, sweat, and rot reveal a hidden truth: borders are not just seen or felt but inhaled and carried within us.

Francis plays with transparency and opacity and befouls his works with greasy fingerprints, petroleum jelly, mold-like overgrowth, dead branches and fish eyes; materials that clash with the sterile, hyper-regulated confinements that hold them. They expose the tension between organic chaos and imposed order and act as metaphors for bodies existing outside the norm, resisting erasure in certain settings.  

Incorporating these ideas, the exhibition does not seek to collapse borders but to animate them, making supposedly neutral objects more alive. What happens when that which should remain outside begins to infiltrate windows, walls, and doorways? A Foot Between the Door challenges the audience to confront these borderlands: between inside and outside, purity and contamination, life and decay. Francis transforms the space into a site of tension and negotiation, and invites us to rethink the politics of exclusion and belonging.

Benjamin Francis (b. 1996, SR&NL) graduated from the Fine Arts programme at ArtEZ BEAR, University of the Arts with Base for Experiment, Art, and Research, in Arnhem in 2020. As a multidisciplinary artist, Francis combines installative object-based work with experimental and participatory performances. Within his practice, he reflects on his lived experience of being corrected for spelling mistakes, due to dyslexia. These dissonances or errors are carefully corrected in our current-day society, as anything outside the norm is deemed unproductive and therefore excluded.

Both in his performances and object-based works, the audience is placed in unexpected situations, thus becoming a part of the artwork. Through this interactive process, Francis aims to challenge the dichotomy between ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ and undermine dominant systems of knowledge. As a result, he seeks to expose the hidden dynamics of power structures. Key questions within his practice consider what such systems are rooted in and who is in the position to dictate them. As such, the recurring themes in Francis’ work include dirt, cleanliness, pedagogy, discipline, authority, and power relations.

Francis often starts from ‘the other’ — (marginalized) bodies that are more heavily subjected to the normative workings of society. He draws from his own experience of being constantly corrected which created a tense relationship with authority figures, such as teachers. The tension between the normative society and his position as a queer person of color is an underlying tendency that intensifies this experience. The ‘cleaning up’ of mistakes, decay, and the dissection of something (both physically and verbally) is — in Francis’ view — what art is fundamentally about.

Since graduating from ArtEZ BEAR, Benjamin has shown at No Man’s Art Gallery, NL; Christine König Galerie, AU; Art Antwerp, BE; Luther Museum, NL; PuntWG, NL; Ballroom Project #6, BE; Hotel Maria Kapel, NL; If I Can’t Dance, Kunsthuis Syb, Het HEM, P/////AKT, NL; W139, NL; MÉLANGE, DE; Rencontres internationales, DE; SECONDroom, BE; and Mutter, NL, amongst others.

Opening Thursday February 20th from 5 - 8 pm

No Man’s Art Gallery is pleased to announce Alan Hernández’s participation in the first edition of the Design Biennale Rotterdam 2025, at Huidenclub from 20 February - 2 March 2025.

Please find further informations here.

We are honoured to announce that Afra Eisma opens her first institutional solo exhibition Hush at the ICA San Diego, USA in 2025.

Further information to follow here.

Photos courtesy of ICA San Diego, USA

We are delighted to announce that RojoNegro has been selected to be a part of The Stuart Collection’s Emerging Artists Commissioning Program anticipated between spring 2025 and fall 2026.

Further information to follow here.

We are honoured to share that Afra Eisma will be participating in a group show at La Kunsthalle, Centre d’Art Contemporain Mulhouse, Se faire plaisir.

Find more information here.

We are thrilled to share that Alan Hernández is participating in this year’s edition of Salón Acme.

Find more information here.

We wholeheartedly congratulate Marilyn Sonneveld who has been nominated for the Royal Award for Modern Painting 2025, which marks her second nomination for this prestigious award.

Her work will be on show in the Royal Palace of Amsterdam from February 1st - March 31st.
More information: Royal Palace Amsterdam

online catalogue

Art Antwerp
Booth A30
12 - 15 December 2024

Mia Chaplin
Jamal Nxedlana
Maxim Santalov
Marilyn Sonneveld

NMAG’s participation at Art Antwerp is supported by Mondriaan Fonds.

online catalogue

Untitled Art Fair
Booth A22
4 - 8 December 2024

Alan Hernández
Sam Samiee

NMAG’s participation at Untitled Miami Beach is supported by Mondriaan Fonds.

From 23 November 2024 to 4 May 2025, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will be showcasing I Hit You With a Flower – sugar-coated art with a punch, an eye-catchingly sweet exhibition that celebrates diversity in society. It is also a tribute to ‘girly art’, a term that has often been used as a derogatory label but is now being reclaimed as a badge of honour.

Alan Hernández, Alex Naber & ChelseaBoy, Anna Aagaard Jensen (en met Micheline Nahra), Araks Sahakyan, Béatrice Lussol, Dae Uk Kim, Ellande Jaureguiberry, Frances Goodman, Jakob Lena Knebl, Jurjen Galema, Kinke Kooi, Lily van der Stokker, Lucile Boiron, Mari Katayama, Marijke Vasey, Mona Cara, My-Lan Hoang-Thuy, Pipilotti Rist, Richard Otparlic & Lucas Tortolano, Rory Pilgrim, Sarah Tritz, Vera Gulikers and Zoe Williams. Curated by Nanda Janssen.

More information at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam

Press:

‘Ancestors, neighbours, myths and religion’, an interview of Alejandro Galván by Kiki Mertens for Metropolis M, 2025

Alejandro Galván has been invited to participate in a residency at Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht, starting at the beginning of November 2024, followed by his first solo exhibition Vultures and Fireflies open June 28th 2025.

More information: Marres, House for Contemporary Culture

Photos by Gert Jan van Rooij

Join a performance by Benjamin Francis at The Luther Museum, once a Lutheran hospice for the elderly, women and orphans. The Spirit of Amsterdam is an evening in which several young creators depict the genius loci, or spirit of the former nursing home. An evening of theater, music and visual art.

More information at: Luther Museum

Afra Eisma will participate in a group exhibition, The New Mother Sculptures, at Museum Cobra in Amstelveen, NL.

“The New Mother Sculptures is a large, mysterious contemporary sculpture exhibition, specially organized by artist Ad de Jong. The upper room of the museum transforms into one open space with 40 contemporary sculptures by Dutch artists on a specially laid clay floor and with a soundscape.”

Find more information here.

Press:
- Painting is alive and kicking, Edo Dijksterhuis in het Parool, 2024
- The Royal Painting Prize of 2024, Anna van Leeuwen, de Volkskrant, 2024

Tobias Thaens (Eindhoven, NL, 1999) is one of the three winners of the Royal Award for Painting 2024. Alongside the three winners, are the nominees, which includes Marilyn Sonneveld (1990, NL). The exhibition can be visited until November 10th in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. More information: Royal Prize for Painting 2024

From 6 October 2024 to 4 December 2024, the Revuelta Galería presents Lx Montañx no tiene género, a curatorial project as part of Design Week Mexico 2024. Drawing from the complexities of nature and existence itself, this exhibition invites its audience to challenge human societal norms by questioning notions of order and categorisation, thus examining gender and identity.

Alan Hernández, Andrés Gutierrez, Daach, Daniel Adolfo, Daniel Berman, Inari Reséndiz, Lordag & Sondag, Rosita Relámpago, Tamar Gaon, Yocomos.

Curated by Gustavo García Murrieta.

More information at Revuelta Galería.

online catalogue

NMAG is honoured to present a solo presentation by Jamal Nxedlana, together with a special edition by Desiré van den Berg at Unseen Photo Fair, Amsterdam.

Unseen Photo Fair
19.09 - 22.09.2024
Booth nr 61

Jamal Nxedlana

With a special edition by:
Desiré van den Berg

ONLINE CATALOGUE

14.09.2024 - 27.10.2024

Opening Saturday September 14th from 5 - 8 pm
Gallery Season Afterparty 8pm - late

No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present A scallop has two hundred eyes; twelve paintings on what they might see, the first solo exhibition by Dutch painter Tobias Thaens with the gallery. Affirming the continuous interconnectedness of the natural and the artistic, Thaens builds androgynous worlds, wherein organic matter becomes interwoven in the threads of sensitivity and vulnerability. 

As butterflies drink the tears of crocodiles, turtles, and birds, the observer is invited to an intimate meeting between two different entities - nature and culture, biology and poetry - all trying to make sense of the reality surrounding them. In a macrocosm and on canvas, through his painting practice, Thaens instils a shade of romance in the vastness of the everyday.

Drawing inspiration from Canadian poet Anne Carson, Thaens aligns himself with the author in an attempt to “entertain a question, without conclusion but not without interest,” to break free from the code that instrumentalises how we describe and perceive the world. While Carson’s practice lies in the realm of language, for Thaens, it is in imagery. Upholding the idea of broadening a space for poetry and for art, whereby one is able to make connections beforehand invisible, is the thread that pulls Thaens to Carson’s writing and allows him to perform a transfer of an in-between space – the space betwixt blossoming and decaying – from page onto canvas, from a word to a brushstroke, from a memory to a landscape. 

Thaens finishes his paintings without ever finishing them; he constructs them amidst juxtapositions and parallels, worlds and entities, and leaves them to breathe, to continue their cycle of existence right then and there. They allude to a multiplicity of meanings and beings. This fluid world of the in-between, is an invitation to an indwelling dialogue between the artist and that which is being painted; oftentimes enveloping nonhuman creatures, such as arthropods, crustaceans, and fungi, encouraging conversations between dissimilar others. 

Whether a friend’s bag or the colour of their hair, the details embedded in his mental archive open up the doors to the artist’s exploration of viscerality, ephemerality, and intimacy, in an attempt to broaden, extend, and stretch. For Thaens, this necessitates a process whereby he imagines the nonhuman others perceiving, experiencing, and remaining just as he perceives, experiences, and remains. In Whisper (Lieveling), he paints a scene upon which he imagines how a bat would see with echolocation. By and of itself, the abstract nature of Thaens’ paintings requires the viewer to look for points of departure, or rather – the entities of departure, so as to grasp fibres of familiarity and existence with the work. Red strokes flowing through a friend’s hair inch close towards vesicles travelling in the intercellular fluid, while the texture of their bag edges onto an enchanting exoskeleton. And yet, if the work does not contain the initial object anymore, what does it become? 

As a landscape of eyes touching eyes and layers peeking at layers, A scallop has two hundred eyes; twelve paintings on what they might see can be read through the imagery of skin. Shimmering, translucent, reflecting light just as scales, singing in rubato, peeling layers of comfort, injecting a meeting of others, demanding an inquisitive gaze.

Text by Zuzia Szatkowska

A scallop has two hundred eyes; twelve paintings on what they might see extends to both gallery locations: Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327 and Bos en Lommerweg 88 and runs until October 27th 2024. For more information or inquiries contact info@nomansart.com

Tobias Thaens (Eindhoven, NL, 1999) is a painter who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the AKI Academy for Art & Design, Enschede, the Netherlands, in 2021 and completed his residency at De Ateliers, Amsterdam, in 2023. Thaens’ paintings offer the artist’s reflections on the hard contrasts between form and function, which dissolve into one another uninterrupted, revealing the fluidity of existence and the interconnectedness of distinct energies.

Through a deep fascination with animals utilising camouflage, the artist brings to light a shared visual language of organisms within an ecosystem, where colours and shapes follow each other and the agency they hold changes over time. An androgynous world where nature dynamically alters its skin pattern and colour, a series of perceptive and emotional depths lay ahead. This exploration bleeds out into the intimate experience, blurring the line between biology and poetics. Through this permeation, Thaens instils in the viewer a lasting curiosity for the discourse of perception and interpretation.

Since graduating from AKI, Thaens has participated in exhibitions at Ballroom Projects, BE, Woonhuis, NL, De Ateliers, NL, and Gerard Hofland (NL).