Fundatie Forward | Buhlebezwe Siwani
Museum de Fundatie, 2026. Photographs by Peter Tijhuis
We are proud to announce that Buhlebezwe Siwani will present her first solo exhibition in a Dutch museum at Museum de Fundatie.
This exhibition is part of the Fundatie Forward programme, a series of first solo museum exhibitions by contemporary artists who live and work in the Netherlands. Through this exciting new series, Museum de Fundatie strives to create a platform and produce momentum for the artists.
Please find further information here.
KIOSK: Boots | Merijn Kavelaars
18.04 - 14.06. 2026
Location: KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327.
Open by appointment.
Merijn Kavelaars (1985, The Netherlands) has spent years working across painting and installation, developing a practice grounded in intuition and accumulation. His work moves through spaces, streets and surfaces, often guided by impulse and an open attitude. After a long period of living and working in temporary places, he has recently established a studio back in his roots in Waalre. This shift towards permanence has allowed him to turn more inward, returning to the landscape of his childhood and continuing a process of working through and reshaping early experiences.
Boots begins beneath the surface. Objects, fragments and memories from Kavelaars’ childhood are placed under a blank canvas, forming an intimate and deeply personal foundation. Hand clayed ceramic boots, a plastic car, bow and arrow, and other toys and remnants of his early life are assembled below. They remain largely out of sight, yet determine what follows; the painting becomes a map of memory.
This approach originated during a residency in Mexico. In Tepoztlán, surrounded by nature, Kavelaars was overcome of his childhood and relationship to his mother. There, he began experimenting with placing materials directly on the ground, using the landscape itself as a base from which the work could take shape, an experience that marked a step towards abstraction.
Once the foundation is set, the canvas is draped over it and the process begins. Acrylic, spray paint, water, and airbrush move across the surface, guided by the contours beneath. The method is immediate and embraces unpredictability. Kavelaars steers chance by balancing intervention with surrender, allowing the materials to find their own paths. Paint flows, spreads, and settles, reflecting a fluid mode of thinking in which gestures remain open and adaptive.
Moments of memory, conversation and emotional urgency feed directly into the work. The paintings emerge through a continuous negotiation between what is hidden and what appears, between intention and release.
The invitation for Boots features Kavelaars’ childhood painting of a cat. Kavelaars recalls imagining his life as a feline: roaming freely, taking leaps and always landing on his feet, trusting instinct and balance. This logic runs through the exhibition; a willingness to dig deep and let go, to trust the act and move freely. The works in Boots remain open, layered and in motion, each part of an ongoing mapping where material, memory and gesture meet.
From 22 April onwards, NMAG KIOSK is open Wednesday - Saturday from 12 - 17hr until 16 May 2026, or by appointment.
Photos by Jonathan de Waart
afra eisma wins Charlotte Köhler Prize
afra eisma, warrior garments, 2023 textile, thread, stuffing, sound displayed at the Tetley, Leeds, UK. Photography by Jules Lister
afra eisma wins Charlotte Köhler Prize
afra eisma was been awarded the Charlotte Köhler Prize by the Cultuurfonds. The award was presented at De Nieuwe Liefde and includes €20,000 to support the further development of her practice.We warmheartedly congratulate eisma, who deserves to be recognised for her distinctive visual language and immersive installations. This prize marks an important moment in the continued growth of eisma’s work.
More information Cultuurfonds
61st Venice Biennale | Mexican Pavillion
Press:
Hyperallergic's Guide to the 2026 Venice Biennale, Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergic
The Venice Biennale 2026: The Art of Instability, Laurent Moïsi, Whitewall
Designboom's ultimate guide to the Venice art Biennale 2026, thomai tsimpoum, Designboom
Which Artists Are Headed to the Venice Biennale in 2026?, Jo Lawson-Tancred, Artnet News
Ecco com'è il Padiglione del Messico alla Biennale Arte 2026 con il duo RojoNegro, Artribune
"Bailar para sostener al universo": arte de México en la Bienal de Venecia, Frida Juárez Bautista, El Universal
México rinde un homenaje a las culturas mesoamericanas en la Bienal de Venecia, Merry MacMasters, La Jornada
La instalación 'Actos invisibles para sostener el universo' representa a México en la Bienal de Venecia, Aristegui Noticias
El colectivo RojoNegro llevará la decolonización a Bienal de Venecia, El Porvenir
Field notes from curator Jess Berlanga Taylor, Jess Berlanga Taylor, Stuart Collection, UC San Diego
The Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) announce that the RojoNegro Collective, made up of María Sosa and Noé Martínez, has been commissioned to represent Mexico at the 61st International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which will take place from May 9 to November 22, 2026.
After a process of analysis and deliberation, the proposal by RojoNegro, titled Actos invisibles para sostener el universo, curated by Jessica Berlanga Taylor, was selected for its conceptual framework and its ability to articulate sensitive, situated, and critical visions. The proposal addresses urgent topics such as ancestral memory, epistemic justice, decolonization, and relational ecology, drawing on indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant cosmogonies not as external references, but as living matrices of thought that shape their forms of creation, connection, and imagination.
RojoNegro is an artist duo consisting of María Sosa (1985) and Noé Martínez (1986), whose practice interweaves ancestral memory, the languages of the body, and ritual technologies from a decolonial perspective. Through installation, performance, sound, and the use of organic materials, their work summons situated forms of knowledge that question processes of colonization and their persistent effects on bodies, territories, and contemporary worldviews.
The project will dialogue with In Minor Keys (Modo Menor), the curatorial proposal of the 61st edition, developed from the vision of the late curator Koyo Kouoh, which conceives the exhibition as a collective score created with artists whose work merge organically with society.
Photo Alvise Busetto
María Sosa graduated from the Universidad Michoacán de San Nicolas de Hidalgo. Sosa’s practice stems from her research about our shared colonial past and how it constitutes contemporary social dynamics as an epistemicide of prehispanic worlds, racism, sexism, and the invisibility of multiple nonwesterner’s ways of life in the American continent. Sosa’s work is nourished by her research of prehispanic art, anthropology, the methodology of Ecología de Saberes and the exploration of production techniques of ritual prehispanic and contemporary objects.
Noé Martínez is a visual artist and filmmaker who graduated from Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (“La Esmeralda”) in Mexico City. His work functions as a case study that emerges from personal history, making use of ethnographic methodologies and research of the various histories of indigenous communities of the American continent.
RojoNegro’s recent solo exhibitions include: Debut Solo Exhibition, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), upcoming; Volví a ser vasija, volví a ser animal a ser planta, volví a ser tiempo, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Zapopan (MX), 2024; Tepalcates de sueños, commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York in Mexico City (MX), 2022; and El encuentro de los tepalcates, an offsite project with a performance and presentation video commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York (USA), 2021.
Their group exhibitions and projects include: Commission for Stuart Collection of UCSD University of San Diego (USA), upcoming; Fantastic Creatures, Museum Van Bommel Van Dam, Venlo (NL), upcoming; Transmisión Ancestral, Plataforma, Guadalajara, Jalisco (MX), 2024; Cordillera, Galería Extra, Guatemala City (GU), 2024; Las estrellas me iluminan al revés, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), 2022; and their participation in the Venice International Performance Art Week, Palazzo Mora, Venice (IT), 2016.
Photos by Alvise Busetto
61st Venice Biennale | Buhlebezwe Siwani
Buhlebezwe Siwani will participate in the 61st International Art Exhibition of the La Biennale di Venezia, presented in the Giardini and Arsenale from 9 May to 22 November 2026.
Titled In Minor Keys, this edition was conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh and will be realised by the curatorial team she assembled, faithfully carrying forward her vision, from the artists and theoretical framework to the exhibition design and catalogue she began shaping last year.
In Minor Keys marks a powerful return to the sensory, affective, and subjective dimensions of art. Buhlebezwe Siwani’s participation is both an honor and a responsibility within a project that foregrounds subtle registers of perception, intimacy, and resonance.
The exhibition is realised with the curatorial team assembled by Kouoh, including advisors Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Rasha Salti; editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and assistant Rory Tsapayi.
More information: 61st International Art Exhibition of the La Biennale di Venezia
Buhlebezwe Siwani, by Koos Breukel
Buhlebezwe Siwani is a visual artist that lives and works between Cape Town and Amsterdam. She completed her BAFA at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Siwani works with performance, photography, sculpture, and installation. Siwani’s work interrogates the patriarchal framing of the Black female body and Black female experience within the South African context. As a Sangoma, a spiritual healer that works within the space of the death and the living, Siwani focused her artistic prac- tice into rituality and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality.
Each of her projects deals with the relationship between ancestral rituals and mod- ern life, touching social and political topics, such as the female body, Black commu- nities, histories of colonisation and the paradoxes of our contemporary society, all seen through the filter of the artist’s own biography and experience.
Buhlebezwe Siwani is shortlisted for the Prix de Rome (2025), was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize (2024) and was the winner of the 2021 Standard Bank Young Artists Awards in the category of Visual Arts.
Solo exhibitions include: Intsomi, No Man’s Art Gallery (2025); ulwela amaza, Rozenstraat - a rose is a rose, Amsterdam (2025); iYeza, Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg (2023); Amanzi angena endlini, Madragoa, Lisbon (2022); Impilo Inegama, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (2022); Dedisa ubumnyama, Cairns Art Gallery, Cairns (2021), group exhibitions include: Good Mom/Bad Mom, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2025); Manifesto 15 (2024); 14th Gwangju Bienni- al, Gwangju (2023); Chrysalis, The Butterfly Dream, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2023); A Clearing in the Forest, TATE Modern, London (2022).
Artist in Residence | Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS), Tokyo, JP
We are honored to announce that Benjamin Francis is selected as resident at TOKAS, JP, for their International Creator Residency Program in the summer of 2026.
Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS), operated by a division of The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, offers artist-in-residence programs for international creators working in various creative fields to stay, engage in creation, and conduct research activities in Tokyo.
The “International Creator Residency Program” aims to invite distinguished and highly motivated creators in the fields of visual art, film, design, and architecture from all over the world and offer them with opportunities to work in Tokyo. The result of the residency will be presented at the OPEN STUDIO and/or the Result Presentation at TOKAS Hongo.
afra eisma resident at EKWC
afra eisma, fuwa fuwa, 2022, porcelain, body & glaze 54 x 54 x 19 cm Photos Gert Jan Van Rooij
afra eisma at EKWC
EKWC is an international artist-in-residence and research centre for ceramics. For over 50 years, artists, designers and architects from all over the world have worked here to experiment with clay. The experiments result in both special works of art and technical innovations. The works developed here are shown in museums from New York to Tokyo.
The Trophies | Sam Samiee
29.05 - 26.07.2026
The Trophies | Sam Samiee
Opening: Friday 29 May, 4–8 PM
Opening word: Hester Alberdingk Thijm, 6:30 PM
Artist talk: 7:00 PM (Sam Samiee in conversation with Sara Giannini)
Location: No Man's Art Gallery, Bos en Lommerweg 88-90
Please RSVP to the artist talk (free admission) here.
The Trophies is about beauty as a form of sustenance. Created amid war, Sam Samiee turns to painting flowers, poetry, and portraits of beloved thinkers. These trophies are not symbols of conquest, but of endurance, memory, and resistance. Still lifes of plants and domestic interiors become gestures of tenderness against destruction, while portraits of writers, poets, and political thinkers honour those whose words and visions have sustained the artist through catastrophe. Beauty is treated not as escape, but as a vital force for living: a way of preserving love, thought, and imagination when the world itself seems on the verge of collapse.
For the occasion of this exhibition, Sam Samiee wrote The Trophies, A Declaration of Intent.
Sam Samiee, Shiraz, 2026, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 cm
Sam Samiee (b.1988, IR) is a painter and essayist based in Amsterdam and Tehran. He is a winner of the Royal Award for Painting in 2016 and Wolvecamp Prize in 2018 and finished the Rijksakademie residency in 2015 and ArtEZ University of Arts and Design in 2013, where he was a lecturer of painting until 2020. Samiee synthesises his heavy research on art history and Persian poetry into a studio practice that employs painting in multiple registers.
The characteristic of his installations as extended paintings is the break from the tradition of flat painting and a return to the original question of how artists can represent the three-dimensional world in the space of painting as a metaphor for a set of ideas. He employs a range of painterly attitudes from oil paintings to iPad paintings, figuration, abstraction, the break of the rectangular frame and usage of text among other methods. Recently Samiee’s work focuses on a period of painting that parted ways from avant-garde, with the emphasis on decorative modes of work, of artists such as Matisse and Bonnard.
Sam Samiee has exhibited internationally, recent solo shows include: When Hell Breaks Loose I’ll Tell You Your Legs Were Always on My Mind, No Man’s Art Gallery, NL (2023), 175 Trials & Errors, Dastan Basement, Tehran, IR (2023), A Garden of Clouds, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, NL (2023). Samiee has exhibited his works at the 10th Berlin Biennale, at Kunstmuseum, the Hague; the Parasol Unit Foundation; Manchester Art Gallery; Art Basel Hong Kong; and Liste Art Fair, among other international presentations. Footnotes to Life, a monograph on his work awarded as a part of the Wolvecamp Prize for painting in 2018, has won the Best Dutch Book Design in 2020. Most recently, Masir Curatorial - a new collective co-founded by Samiee, debuted with their first group show What’s Your Treasure? in Kazerounian Mansion, Shiraz, IR.
Samiee’s work is placed internationally in public and private collections. Public collections include: De Rijksoverheid (NL), Akzo Nobel Collection (NL), Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (NL), DNB Collection (NL), Teylers Museum (NL).
Sam Samiee in his studio. Photo by Mania Karimianpour, 2026
Volkskrant Visual Art Prize | Stedelijk Museum Schiedam | Schiedam, NL
afra eisma, by Verena Blok, 2026
Volkskrant Visual Art Award 2026
Four artist have been shortlisted for the 2026 Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs (Volkskrant Visual Art Award): afra eisma, Levi van Gelder, Sondi, and Malik Saïb-Mezghiche. From 13 June up to and including 2 August 2026, their work will be exhibited at Monopole, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam’s new art space.
Celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2026, the Volkskrant Visual Art Award showcases talented artists up to the age of 35 who live or work in the Netherlands. The nominated artists have a chance of winning the jury award, including a cash prize of 10,000 euros, and/or the audience award, including a cash prize of 2,500 euros. Both prizes are made available by the Schiedam-based De Groot Fund.
More information at Monopole
Childrens Biennial | Groninger Museum | Groningen, NL
Children’s Biennale | Groninger Museum
The third edition of the museum's children's biennale invites afra eisma, who challenges societal norms and structures, and for whom collaborating with children and young people is an integral part of their practice.
Together, all artists and children disrupt received ideas and inherited role models, formed by our education systems, social networks, the media and the (nuclear) family. The biennale asks which rules and structures do we want to continue with, and which do we want to let go of? What transformative power lies in disobedience? And what role can our desires and imagination play? In conjunction with the exhibition The Architect & The Housewife: Cleaning the House, Building the Future the biennale initiates exchange about the many ways in which we can live, work and play together.
More information at Groninger Museum
UNFAIR26 | Amsterdam, NL
Foor your own good, Banjamin Francis, 2026
We are proud to share that Benjamin Francis will be taking part in Unfair 2026.
From 17 to 20 September, UNFAIR26 opens at Gashouder in Amsterdam. The line-up of artists was selected with the help of our Curatorial Advisory Committee.
Unfair Amsterdam was founded in 2012 by artists, based on an artist-first philosophy. Since then, Unfair has provided a platform for over 650 (inter) national emerging and established artists at more than 70 events. By focusing on the creators, Unfair offers its visitors (buyers, viewers and professionals) a unique perspective on contemporary visual art. Unfair safeguards the position of talented contemporary artists on their way to the top by connecting them, in a playful way, with art lovers and buyers
Benjamin Francis is a multidisciplinary artist who 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.
Oh vader, kom huiswaarts | Marilyn Sonneveld
Oh vader, kom huiswaarts, curated by Humie Pourseyf with work by Marilyn Sonneveld and Salim Bayri, Kaspar Dejong, David Groot (1949–2021), Noa Jansma, Jörg Emmanuel Lanz (1964–1995), Bonnie Oglive, Ruben Raven, Kohyar Pourseyf (1954–2016), Rodrigo Red Sandoval, Ghita Skali, Daniel Slats, Andreas Tegnander, Hans van der Leeuw (1959–2024), Guido van der Werve en Leendert Vooijce.
More information at Loods 6.
The Ministry Of Ceramic Affairs II | Presented by Koos Buster
We are excited to share that afra eisma will be taking part in group exhibition The Ministry Of Ceramic Affairs II, hosted by Koos Buster at ram art space.
Please find further information here.
Open Studio, Espacio Union, Mexico City | Tobias Thaens
Open Studio | Tobias Thaens
Wednesday 22 April 2026
12 - 4pm
Location: Unión 221, Escandón I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11800, CDMX
Join us for an open studio with Tobias Thaens (b. 1999, NL), currently artist in resident at Espacio Unión in Mexico City. During his residency he continues to draw inspiration from both nature and culture, from animals using camouflage to the colour of lipstick, Thaens looks at how identity and surface are constructed and perceived. His work often evokes an androgynous, fluid world in which bodies and environments subtly change their skin, pattern, or tone.
Rather than escaping the everyday, he works through it, finding intensity and strangeness within the mundane experience. By focusing on these small shifts and layered surfaces, Thaens invites viewers to look longer and perhaps reconsider what they think they see.
Tobias Thaens is a painter who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the AKI Academy for Art & Design, Enschede, the Netherlands, in 2021, completed his residency at DeAteliers, Amsterdam, in 2023 and won the Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2024. He currently has a solo exhibition at Brownies, Shanghai.
Typha | Maxim Santalov
online catalogue
18.04 - 17.05. 20256
Opening: Saturday April 18th, from 5 - 8 pm
Location: NMAG, Bos en Lommerweg 88-90
No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to open Typha the fourth solo exhibition by Maxim Santalov with the gallery.
At a young age, the self-taught artist started drawing after school while waiting for his grandmother to finish work at the hairdresser’s salon in the outskirts of Moscow. He created small illustrations on magazine covers. These daily sketches soon developed into a serious artistic passion without ever compromising his youthful spontaneity.
Typha shows a dense and rhythmic universe where memory and imagination intertwine. Intricately composed drawings, built from geometric repetition and vivid colour, trace pathways through imagined ecosystems populated by insects, plants, cosmic constellations and hybrid figures. Rooted in childhood experiences, his work reflects summers spent in rural Ukraine, where encounters with nature shaped his visual language. This sense of wonder persists in his “insectarium”, a metaphorical space where vanishing species and unidentifiable creatures coexist.
Santalov’s compositions balance oppositions such as modern and rural, rigid and organic, playful and unsettling. Wax crayon, pencil and acrylic create surfaces alive with scratches and ripples, giving breath to seemingly compact spaces. His works invite viewers to wander, like tracing an insect’s trail, through shifting narratives that evoke both personal memory and cultural echoes.
In Typha, Santalov deepens this exploration. “Typha” refers to a genus of wetland plants, commonly known as cattails, symbolising resilience, growth and ecological interconnectedness. Rooted in water yet reaching upwards, they mirror the artist’s process, grounded in memory while extending into speculative worlds. Here, Typha becomes both subject and metaphor, guiding us through a landscape where organic life merges with geometric order.
Photos by Jonathan de Waart
through repetition | Sam Samiee
Flames, from Siavash in Flames (1), Acryclic on paper, 66.5 x 91.5 cm
We are proud to announce that Sam Samiee will take part in through repetition - time, memory, and continuity; a group show by Bradwolff & Partners.
At a time when established forms of ritual and meaning are losing their self-evidence, repetition appears here not as a mechanism, but as shift. What returns does so, altered. Sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes just enough to tilt meaning. Form seems, along the way, to give something up or to take something on that does not settle.
More information at Bradwolff & Partners.
Prospects, Rotterdam Ahoy | Mondriaan fonds
We are excited to share that Benjamin Francis will be amongst the 92 artists exhibiting their work at the 14th edition of Prospects, presented by Mondriaan Fonds, which will take place at Rotterdam Ahoy alongside Art Rotterdam 2026.
This year’s edition of Prospects is curated by Johan Gustavsson and Daphne Verberg, shedding light on a new wave of artists who address today's changing world with imagination, rigour, and great energy.
More information here.
When a feather meets amber | Tobias Thaens
Tobias Thaens has his first solo exhibition in Shanghai with BROWNIE Project titled When feather meets amber, on show until 10 may 2026.
Warmoes Biënnale | Buhlebezwe Siwani
We are honoured to announce that Buhlebezwe Siwani is a part of Museum Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder’s first edition of Warmoes Biënnale. The event will take place in nineteen different locations throughout Amsterdam city center for two months, bringing the city together with contemporary art.
In her work, Buhlebezwe Siwani explores themes such as meaning and tolerance, in the historical context of Catholicism.
More information about the event and her work can be accessed here.
Bring on the Dancing Horses | Group Show
Arto Vanhasselt | Bin Koh | Hend Samir | Josefin Arnell
Krystel Geerts | Mia Chaplin | Sakir Khader | Tobias Thaens
Graphic design: Ayumi White
Festive Opening: Tuesday 17th February
Time: 5PM - 8PM
7PM 'Kyrie Ignis Divine Eleison' a Reading Performance by Bin Koh
Location: NMAG, Bos en Lommerweg 88
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, No Man’s Art Gallery welcomes the Year of the Fire Horse by opening Bring on the Dancing Horses, a group exhibition with works by Arto Vanhasselt, Bin Koh, Hend Samir, Josefin Arnell, Krystel Geerts, Mia Chaplin, Sakir Khader and Tobias Thaens.
The artists are invited to reflect on a moment defined by passage and transformation. Through the symbol of the horse, they bring fragility, softness and poetry into focus. Bring on the Dancing Horses moves in a rhythm between motion and stillness, where fragility does not oppose strength but exists alongside it. As our moon opens a new cycle, the exhibition proposes attentiveness, reflection and softness as ways of moving forward, leaving us with a space to imagine tomorrow.
Long before language was fixed or history recorded, full-bodied horses appeared in early cave paintings (such as Lascaux c. 15.000 BCE). They were painted strong and alive, their spiritual qualities still present. These images are an attempt to imagine continuity, carrying meaning across uncertainty and time, left for the next passerby to discover.
In a present that feels increasingly broken, hope persists in the artist’s urge to create. Rather than asserting permanence, dominance or heroic scale, the works gathered here approach presence as something vulnerable, temporary and relational. Across the exhibition, monumentality is quietly undone: a photograph holds a life soon to be lost; a gate stands hollowed rather than fortified; a horse emerges through recognition rather than construction; care reveals its proximity to desire and control.
In Bring on the Dancing Horses monumentality resides in works that resist spectacle and remain open, unfinished and perhaps hold us in a moment suspended.
The exhibition runs until April 6th 2026.
Photos Jonathan de Waart
mild tooth of milk | Dutch Warehouse, kochi, hosted by Museum of Art & Photography, India
afra eisma, warrior garments, 2023 textile, thread, stuffing, sound displayed at the Tetley, Leeds, UK. Photography by Jules Lister
We are proud to announce that afra eisma will present their solo show mild tooth of milk with the Museum of Art and Photography at the Dutch Warehouse in the port town of Kochi, India. The show will run alongside Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025–26, with eisma’s vibrant textiles and tapestries creating an entanglement of play, vulnerability and softness.
More information at Museum of Art and Photography.
Art Antwerp 2025
online catalogue
Art Antwerp
Booth A46
11 - 14 December 2024
afra eisma
RojoNegro
Sam Samiee
Buhlebezwe Siwani
NMAG’s participation at Art Antwerp is supported by Mondriaan Fonds.
Art Antwerp 2025. All images by Ben Van den Berghe - We Document Art
Shortlist Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025 | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
We are proud to share that Buhlebezwe Siwani has been nominated for the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025. Alongside three other nominees, she will receive a production budget to create new work over the coming months. The resulting artworks will be presented at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam starting Saturday, 29 November 2025. A publication accompanying the exhibition will also be released.
More information here.
Nocturnals | Curated by Eline Doodeman
online catalogue
08.11.2025 - 18.01.2026
(Closed for holidays between 20 December 2025 and 12 January 2026)
No Man’s Art Gallery presents Nocturnals, a show presenting the tangible and intangible whisperings of life that happen in the company of darkness. Both sensitive and elusive, the night's opaqueness is used as a strength rather than an aesthetic alone.
The artworks emerge as protagonists that embody the same bristling perplexities that animate the night itself. They play with cosmic distances, portals to other realms, and create space for a fluid sense of identity. Nocturnals not only highlights the tensions of the night, but celebrates their right to co-exist.
Participating artists:
Mia Chaplin
afra eisma
Benjamin Francis
Alejandro Galván
Alan Hernández
Jamal Nxedlana
Sam Samiee
Marilyn Sonneveld
Between 20 December 2025 and 11 January 2026 the gallery is only open by appointment.
Exhibition overview of Nocturnals, with Polilla (2022) by Alan Hernández and The Loom #1 (2019) by Sam Samiee, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam, NL, 2025, photo: Jonathan de Waart
WHAT’S YOUR TREASURE? | MASIR CURATORIAL
We are proud to share that Sam Samiee will be taking part in group exhibition What’s Your Treasure?, brought together by Masir Curatorial in Shiraz, Iran.
Held in Kazerouni House, an architectural heritage site in the heart of old Shiraz, What’s Your Treasure? explores the meaning of ‘treasure’; the house is a treasure of the past and the showcased works each hold something about life. Throughout the week, the curators will engage in conversations with selected artists at Roniyas Hotel.
Please find further information here.
Minor Attractions 2025
Online Catalogue
Minor Attractions 2025
October 14 - 18, 2025
THE MANDRAKE, London
We are honoured to announce our debut participation at Minor Attractions 2025 with a presentation by Benjamin Francis.
Minor Attractions is an art fair hosted at The Mandrake Hotel inviting global commercial galleries and not-for-profit art spaces. The fair is designed as a space where art and nightlife meet, allowing the swells of international collectors in the city to mingle with the art workers and artists that make the art world tick.
Benjamin Francis, Dirty Relief, 2024, mirrors, kit, latex, and glass, 150 x 50 x 3 cm. Photograph by Django van Ardenne
haus of fibre | textielmusuem, NL
afra eisma, warrior garments, 2023 textile, thread, stuffing, sound displayed at the Tetley, Leeds, UK. Photography by Jules Lister
We are honoured to announce that afra eisma will be part of the upcoming group exhibition Haus of fibre at TextielMuseum, Tilburg. This exhibition shines light on the role of textiles in the work of artists from the LGBTQIA+ community. The group exhibition takes place in the setting of a house, complete with a living room, kitchen, bedroom, hallway and garden. This layout is inspired by the shared experience of queer people having to create their own home and family in order to live safely outside the framework of the classic cisgender, straight family.
Fantastic Creatures | Museum Van Bommel Van Dam, NL
Photographed by Minted Media, 2025
From October 4, 2025, to March 22, 2026, Museum Van Bommel Van Dam presents the exhibition Fantastic Creatures. This international group exhibition features mostly recent works by renowned and promising artists who draw inspiration from mythical figures and age-old stories. Through fabulous beings expressed in textiles, drawings, ceramics, paintings, videos, and installations, they reflect on current issues such as identity, culture, and social relations. What makes this exhibition so special is the way it connects the old with the new: myths may be stories from the past, but at the same time they are living traditions that continue to evolve and resonate with new generations.
We are beyond honored that five of our artists will participate in this exhibition: afra eisma, Alejandro Galván, RojoNegro, Buhlebezwe Siwani and María Sosa. Alongside: Jamel Armand, Marianne van der Heijden, Camille Henrot, Susanna Inglada, Hella Jongerius, Wouter Osterholt, Tanja Ritterbex, Nina van de Ven, Theresa Weber en Müge Yilmaz. Curated by James Hannan.
Remember our united beginning | Monument trans-Atlantisch slavernijverleden in Den Haag, NL
The visual arts institution Stroom Den Haag has nominated three artists to the municipality to submit a draft design for the monument, among them is the artist we represent, Buhlebezwe Siwani. With her draft design now completed, a jury will select the artist who will be commissioned to finalize and realize the project. For this project Siwani reflected on how to represent both residents and their heritage through a meaningful, symbolic artwork. They aimed to create a powerful and unifying symbol that acknowledges the past with empathy, without dwelling on pain.
More information here.
Artist in Residence | Casa Wabi, Oaxaca, MX
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 is selected as resident at Casa Wabi, MX. The program exists to promote social development through the arts by facilitating mutually beneficial cultural exchanges between artists in any discipline from all over the world and the people, ecology, and ethos of coastal Oaxaca. We host three to six artists at a time in five or six week sessions on the beach north of Puerto Escondido. Every one of our residents is required to find a meaningful way to connect in one of the communities around Casa Wabi through a reciprocal community project. Social connections and cultural cross-pollination are the focus, rather than the production of a specific body of work. We expect our residents to plant seeds of inspiration here in Oaxaca and to spread what they take away.
Book Launch & Opening: “splashdown tender” and soft conversations | Page Not Found
afra eisma, splashdown tender, 2025. The first major monograph by the aritst, co-published by Page Not Found
Page Not Found is pleased to announce the publication of splashdown tender, the first major monograph by afra eisma, co-published by Page Not Found. To celebrate this landmark book, eisma has conceived soft conversations, a solo exhibition opening on September 24th, 2025. Through a deconstructed studio setting, eisma invites visitors to settle into a colorful fusion of textile works. The exhibition runs from September 25th through November 2nd, 2025.
spashdown tender includes contributions by Sara Ahmed, Delphine Bedel, Adrian Bridget, Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone, Diana Campbell, Jordan Karney Chaim, Clem Edwards, Raphael Fonseca, Jori(k) A. Galama, Chihiro Geuzebroek, Daisy Lafarge, adrienne maree brown, Martina Milla, Jo-Lene Ong, Jay Tan, Meenakshi Thirukode, Danielle Vorthuys, and Romy Day Winkel. Edited by Dagmar Bosma.
The book is co-published by Page Not Found and will be released on the opening night. This project is made possible with support from the Municipality of The Hague.
More information at Page Not Found
Preorder the book here
I Will See You On The Other Side | De Kerk
From 19 September until 12 October Buhlebezwe Siwani presents work in De Kerk as part of the exhibition ‘I Will See You On The Other Side’, curated by Marcos Kueh. Kueh is known for his colorful and detailed textile art. In his work, he explores how his motherland is perceived and translates contemporary legends onto textiles. The artist was invited by Unfair to create new work, and was asked to curate a group exhibition around this work.
From this came “I Will See You On The Other Side”, an exhibition that makes you think about forces beyond our material existence and that explores alternative visions of the afterlife: from a fascination with the end of time to spiritual transformation.
Participating artists:
Marcos Kueh
Erwin Olaf †
Buhlebezwe Siwani
Jennifer Tee
Samboleap Tol
Martin Toloku
Bouke de Vries
Ellen Yiu
Puppet Masters | Museum Jan Cunen, NL
afra eisma, drip drop boobie spider (detail), 2023. Textile, thread, stuffing, and sound. Installed dimensions variable. Photo by Jules Lister.
We are honored to announce that afra eisma will be part of the exhibition Puppet Masters at Museum Jan Cunen, the Netherlands. In this show, boundaries between puppeteer and puppet, control and surrender, and art and reality are blurred. Through their familiarity, puppets confront us with our own questions and imperfections. They hold up a mirror, both in theatre and art. Puppet Masters invites artists from the Netherlands and abroad to address the most diverse subjects through the concept of a puppet.
Tokyo Gendai 2025
Online Catalogue
Tokyo Gendai 2025
September 12 - 14, 2025
PACIFICO Yokohama
We are honoured to announce our debut participation at Tokyo Gendai 2025 with a solo presentation by afra eisma in Tokyo, Japan.
No Man’s Art Gallery’s participation is kindly supported by the Mondrian Fund.
Press:
- Tokyo Gendai confirms Japan’s rising market strength, by Elia Carollo, Observer, Sept. 2025
Photos by Kohei Omachi
Los fragmentos que curan | RojoNegro
online catalogue
06.09.2025 - 26.10. 2025
Opening on Saturday, September 6th, from 5 - 8PM
Official Afterparty of the Gallery Opening Season: 8PM till late
Location: NMAG, Bos en Lommerweg 88-90
No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to inaugurate the cultural season with Los fragmentos que curan, the debut solo exhibition in the Netherlands by RojoNegro, the artist duo of María Sosa (b. 1985, MX) and Noé Martínez (b. 1986, MX). In a new body of work, they approach the body as a site of ritual and spiritual dialogue, opening a chapter where ancestral knowledge and contemporary realities meet, transform and renew one another.
The exhibition centers on the three energetic points of the body described in Nahuatl cosmology: the heart, the liver and the head, each materialised in installations with fragments that interweave materials such as papel amate (handmade bark paper), ixtle thread, tobacco, crystal eyes and decorated cacao seeds.
One such work is Altepetl (2025), Nahuatl for “mountain” or “hill” (atl = “water” + tepetl = mountain) - a metaphor for place or state. Here, different fragments appear as birds, symbols of the heart in Mesoamerican culture. They are believed to take flight at the moment of death. Like a net, the work binds them together into an embodied territory, becoming a mountain that shelters a community.
In Reconstrucción del tonal (2025), RojoNegro turns to the tonal, the energetic essence of the head, associated with the sun and destiny. The work reflects on the foundations of their practice, suggesting a world that contains and coexists with many others. It is adorned with handwritten texts from the Declarations of the Selva Lacandona (the Zapatista Manifesto), a poetic call for Indigenous rights and resistance, alongside excerpts from the Mexican Constitution:
“Many words walk in the world. Many worlds are made. In the world of the powerful there is no space for anyone but themselves. In the world we want everyone to fit in. In the world we want many worlds to fit.” (From the Declarations of the Selva Lacandona)
Across the gallery, smaller canvases confront contemporary violence against bodies, race, and ecologies. Texts such as ‘Hay un México lleno de ojos que buscan’ (‘There is a Mexico full of eyes that search’), reference the countless disappearing throughout the country. Through these works, the artists ask how collective healing and the restoration of balance might be possible.
Alongside these, larger oil paintings such as Autorretrato de sombra II (2025) draw on pre-Hispanic codices and archaeological remains. Centered on the shadow, a liminal space between life and death, matter and spirit - the painting merges RojoNegro’s bodies into a collective self-portrait where archaeological figures resurface. Around them appear corn seeds for divination, the fallen warrior alongside a pregnant woman as a parallel form of struggle and dignity, the calves and legs as vital sites of strength in Mesoamerican thought and the jarilla amarilla, a plant used for energetic cleansing.
These figures connect to the video work Habitar lo oculto (2023), where RojoNegro re-stage the postures of archaeological figures through the body, releasing them from vitrines and returning them to life.“Our figure as artists, as a duo is really a vehicle for an objective: that these voices, silenced for 500 years, may live, may exist,” they write.
The practice of RojoNegro emerges from dialogue, kinship and the sharing of dreams. “Every day we wake up talking about our dreams,” they note. Dreams become repositories of knowledge, linking individual experience to collective memory and offering glimpses of other ways of being together.
With Los fragmentos que curan, RojoNegro opens a portal into narratives that remain alive in the present. At once political and poetic, the exhibition confronts the violence of colonisation and capitalism while insisting on the possibility of repair. “Contemporary art and practice is a platform for dialogue between the ancestral and the current and as a platform of care, because what is at stake is memory and life itself.” Each work is a fragment, yet together they assemble a world where balance and renewal become possible.
Installation view of Los fragmentos que curan, solo exhibition by RojoNegro (Noé Martínez and María Sosa). No Man's Art Gallery, Amsterdam, NL, 2025. Image by Jonathan de Waart
Installation view of Los fragmentos que curan, solo exhibition by RojoNegro (Noé Martínez and María Sosa). No Man's Art Gallery, Amsterdam, NL, 2025. Image by Jonathan de Waart
Installation view of Los fragmentos que curan, solo exhibition by RojoNegro (Noé Martínez and María Sosa). No Man's Art Gallery, Amsterdam, NL, 2025. Image by Jonathan de Waart
Installation view of Los fragmentos que curan, solo exhibition by RojoNegro (Noé Martínez and María Sosa). No Man's Art Gallery, Amsterdam, NL, 2025. Image by Jonathan de Waart
Autorretrato de sombra II (Detail), 2025, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 208 x 110 cm. Image by Jonathan de Waart
María Sosa graduated from the Universidad Michoacán de San Nicolas de Hidalgo. Sosa’s practice stems from her research about our shared colonial past and how it constitutes contemporary social dynamics as an epistemicide of prehispanic worlds, racism, sexism, and the invisibility of multiple nonwesterner’s ways of life in the American continent. Sosa’s work is nourished by her research of prehispanic art, anthropology, the methodology of Ecología de Saberes and the exploration of production techniques of ritual prehispanic and contemporary objects.
Noé Martínez is a visual artist and filmmaker who graduated from Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (“La Esmeralda”) in Mexico City. His work functions as a case study that emerges from personal history, making use of ethnographic methodologies and research of the various histories of indigenous communities of the American continent.
RojoNegro’s recent solo exhibitions include: Volví a ser vasija, volví a ser animal a ser planta, volví a ser tiempo, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Zapopan (MX), 2024; Tepalcates de sueños, commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York in Mexico City (MX), 2022; and El encuentro de los tepalcates, an offsite project with a performance and presentation video commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York (USA), 2021.
Their group exhibitions and projects include: Commission for Stuart Collection of UCSD University of San Diego (USA), upcoming; Fantastic Creatures, Museum Van Bommel Van Dam, Venlo (NL), upcoming; Transmisión Ancestral, Plataforma, Guadalajara, Jalisco (MX), 2024; Cordillera, Galería Extra, Guatemala City (GU), 2024; Las estrellas me iluminan al revés, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), 2022; and their participation in the Venice International Performance Art Week, Palazzo Mora, Venice (IT), 2016.
KIOSK: There is no going back | Shivangi Kalra
ONLINE CATALOGUE
06.09.2025 - 26.10.2025
Opening on Saturday, September 6th, from 5 - 8PM
Official Afterparty of the Gallery Opening Season: 8PM till late
Location: NMAG KIOSK, Willem de Zwijgerlaan 327
No Man’s Art Gallery is honoured to present There is no going back, the first solo exhibition of Delhi-born artist Shivangi Kalra with the gallery, hosted at its second location, KIOSK. On view from September 6th to October 26th, the show forms part of KIOSK’s new program, dedicated to showcasing emerging talent and collaborative projects.
Kalra’s intricate painting revisits scenes of social gatherings from her childhood in Delhi, set within the opulent interiors she remembers. These works capture both the festivity and the social constructions embedded in these moments, revealing beauty, nostalgia and quiet tensions. Inviting prolonged contemplation, her compositions seem to hold time still, welcoming audiences into these extended memories now taking physical form in the gallery space.
Photos by Jonathan de Waart
Shivangi Kalra (b. 1998, Delhi, IN) is a visual artist currently based in Amsterdam. She did her Bachelors in painting from College of Art, Delhi (2021) and then moved to the Netherlands to pursue her Masters (painting) at Frank Mohr Institute, 2022-24, thanks to receiving Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and Holland scholarship in 2022, 2023.
After graduating cum laude, she won the Dutch Royal Painting Prize 2024, exhibiting her work in the Dam Palace of Amsterdam. She later won a prize at Galleria Doris Ghetta, resulting in a solo exhibition in Italy, followed by a solo show at Method India in February 2025. She was the first artist in residence at Zawyaty HQ, Marrakech, in 2025. She is presently working towards projects in Paris, Berlin, and the Netherlands later this year.
35 years of minds and matter | from the archive of Kunstinstituut Melly
A Garden of Clouds, 2022, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam. Photographer: Kristien Daem.
In 2025, Kunstinstituut Melly celebrates its 35 year anniversary and to honour that milestone 35 Years of Minds and Matter celebrates the archive. This exhibition will shine light on its starting point artists who have exhibited at Kunstinstituut Melly, and we are proud to announce that Sam Samiee is amongst those artists. A Garden of Clouds is inspired by a close engagement with the Rotterdam Stadsarchief, and explores the contsruction and evolution of Rotterdam’s Cool district.
Please find further information here.