Wolvecamp 100 X Sam Samiee | COBRA Museum
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
BEDROCK exhibition | Capital C, Amsterdam, NL
We are pleased to share that Marilyn Sonneveld is part of BEDROCK, a group exhibition organized by the Young Collectors Circle in collaboration with Amsterdam Art Week, held at Capital C in Amsterdam. The exhibition explores themes of resistance and resilience in both nature and the arts. Marilyn will present a selection of her paintings and glass works.
The exhibition runs from Friday, 21st May until Thursday, 4th September.
Find more information here.
I Hit You With A Flower | MABA, FR
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.
Intsomi | Buhlebezwe Siwani
ONLINE CATALOGUE
Press:
Review on Intsomi in Metropolis M, by Karmen Samson, May 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
Instomi, solo exhibition by Buhlebezwe Siwani at No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam, NL, 2025. Photo by Jonathan de Waart
JUNE Art Fair, Basel 2025
Online Catalogue
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.
Urinoir, 2021, Benjamin Francis, Urine, olive oil, mirrors, kit, latex, glass, 90 x 45 x 3 cm
Vultures & Fireflies: Book launch with Q&A | Maastricht University, NL
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new book accompanying Vultures & Fireflies by Alejandro Galván, currently on view at Marres. Curated by Tonatiuh López and Laura Martinez, the publication explores key themes in Galván’s practice through conversations with various experts. The artist and both curators will be present for a discussion addressing urban planning in Mexico City, social participation, activism, violence, and the power of storytelling. The event will take place on Friday, June 20, 2025, at 5 PM at Karl Dittrich Hall, Student Services Centre, Maastricht University.
Curated by Laura Martinez and Tonatiuh López.
Find more information here.
Textile Biennial 2025: Interwoven Futures | Museum Rijswijk, NL
Photo by De Onkruidenier and Marleen Annema
We are proud to announce that Afra Eisma will participate in the Textile Biennial 2025: Interwoven Futures, held at Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands. This edition centers on the theme of utopias and dystopias, inviting twenty national and international artists to explore visions of ideal worlds and cautionary tales through innovative and inspiring textile-based artworks.
Curated by Julia Geerlings.
Traces We Keep | Brutus, NL
We are honored to announce that Benjamin Francis will be part of the upcoming group exhibition Traces We Keep at Brutus, Rotterdam. This exhibition is part of the third edition of Wild Summer of Art, uses the ruins of the Brutus building as a starting point to explore memory and imagination. It reflects on what remains after turbulent times and how traces of the past shape our view of the future. The artists reveal memory as a scar of history, yet also a source of insight, creativity, and hope.
Curated by Yannick Güldner and Jeanette Bisschops.
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.
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.
Reverie | EDJI Gallery, Brussels, BE
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.
Art Rotterdam 2025
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
A foot between the door | Benjamin Francis
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.
Photos Neeltje de Vries
Alan Hernández | Design Biennale Rotterdam 2025, NL
Alan Hernández, La religión es el opio del pueblo, 2021, Fabric, embroidery, mirror, metal, led light, miracles, 40 x 50 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist
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.
Hush | Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego, USA
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
Se faire plaisir | La Kunsthalle, Centre d’Art Contemporain Mulhouse
Cosmic smithereens, 2024, Acrylic yarn, latex, backing, 429 x 342 cm. Photo Gert Jan Van Rooij
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.
Zona Maco, Mexico City 2025
Online Catalogue
Zona Maco 2025
Booth EJ22
5 - 9 February 2025
We are thrilled to debut at Zona Maco 2025 in Mexico City, showing a duo presentation by Alan Hernández and Tobias Thaens on the emerging EJES section.
NMAG’s participation at Zona Maco is supported by Mondriaan Fonds.
Escorpión (el que pica con la cola), 2025, Alan Hernández, Fabric, metal, hair, light, delcron, sponge, 150 x 190 x 90 cm
Orquídeas, 2025, Alan Hernández, Fabric, glass beads and pearls, wire, epoxy resin, cold porcelain, delcron, 110 x 63 x 114 cm
Sound of a Seam, 2024, Tobias Thaens, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 180 x 140 cm
Photos by Natanael Guzmán