Exhibitions NOW

Contemporary Art Listings The Hague

Tag: Afra Eisma

  • Textile Biennial 2025 at Museum Rijswijk

    Textile Biennial 2025 at Museum Rijswijk

    Fatima Barznge
    Céline Berger
    Annabelle Binnerts
    Elen Braga
    Penelope Cain
    Oana Clitan
    Anna Hoetjes
    Afra Eisma
    Susanne Khalil Yusef
    Servet Kocyigit
    Kwinnie Lê
    Metahaven
    De Onkruidenier
    Cristina Flores Pescorán
    Ada Maricia Patterson
    Oscar Santillán
    Miriam Sentler
    Jolanda Schouten
    Tenant of Culture
    Bruno Zhu

     

    Utopias and dystopias have captured the imagination for centuries. In the Textile Biennial 2025. Interwoven Futures, twenty (inter)national artists explore ideal worlds and warning doom scenarios through innovative and inspiring textile artworks. From delicately woven to strikingly colourful, this versatile exhibition presents a colourful array of works about the social and ecological challenges we face.

    Monumentally woven carpets, refined embroidered traditional fabrics, textile sculptures and intimate video works depict new futures, different world views and our own position in them. Both figurative and abstract, a wide range of textile materials and techniques can be seen: wool, silk, cotton, jacquard, macramé, embroidered, woven, tufted, digitally printed and hand-painted.

    Oana Clitan, for example, shows a hand-tufted, dystopian version of a future that is shaped by both idealism and strict control. Can the state use art to convey a utopian ideology and create myths about urban environments, she wonders.

    Artist collective De Onkruidenier rather seeks to connect with nature and speculates through textile uniforms about the possibilities for a new type of human who has adapted to a salty living environment due to rising sea levels.

    Céline Berger meanwhile weaves together personal archival photographs of the commune in which she grew up with the labour-intensive macramé technique that she learned there. The fabrics raise questions about preached ideals and the lived experience of this alternative way of life.

     The Textile Biennial 2025 in Museum Rijswijk shows a wide selection of well-known artists and young talent, who present their imaginary stories, myths, rituals and fantasies about the world to us from different cultures. Full of colour, criticism, humour and seduction!

  • Billytown Open Studios

    Open Studio and spaces by:

    Eva van Bemmelen, Melle de Boer, Kim David Bots, afra eisma, Yang-ha, Katherina Heil, Sam Hersbach, Robbin Heyker, Paul de Jong, Jojo Knowles, Marcos Kue & Vincent Wong, Rik Möhlmann, Yukari Nakamichi, Bernice Nauta, Finn Stevenhagen, Shana de Villiers, Alexander Webber, Vita Soul Wilmering, Marieke van ’t Zet, The Archives, Sepus Noordmans, Noa Zuidervaart, Nolwen Vuillier, Rehyan Lál, Amol K. Patil, Parabol Studio, Moe Satt

    Exhibition in our downstairs gallery: Cause and Effect, by Noa Zuidervaart.

    Exhibition upstairs at the Peter van Beveren square: Revealing the Layers of by Reyhan Lal, Amolk Patil, and Moe Satt.

    Reading at the Billytown Bookshop:

    Wild as in you
    Shrink milk out
    Of the carton

    By Nolwenn Vuillier
    19:30 – 20:30 – 21:30

    Everyone is cordially invited to our open studios, exhibitions and reading! Visit us during Hoogtij Den Haag.

    Poster by Sepus Noordmans and Parabol Studio

    Billytown
    Downstairs gallery and first floor of:
    Helena van Doeverenplantsoen 3
    2512 ZB
    Den Haag

  • afra eisma: Soft Conversations at Page Not Found

    afra eisma: Soft Conversations at Page Not Found

    To celebrate “splashdown tender”, afra eisma’s new artist book published by Page Not Found, the artist has conceived a solo exhibition titled “soft conversations“. Through a deconstructed studio setting, eisma invites visitors to settle into a colorful fusion of textile works. The exhibition runs from September 25 through November 2, 2025.

    Building on her immersive practice, “soft conversations” takes a rare, inward turn: inviting visitors into the studio-like environment where works, sketches, and inspirations coexist without hierarchy. Here the artist opens the door to the intimate, generative world of her studio: a place where works don’t stand alone, but breathe alongside the images, objects, texts, and textures that inspire them. Visitors are invited into this inner kingdom, where the boundaries between artworks and their conditions of emergence blur.

    eisma’s textile, ceramic, and embroidered works often welcome viewers with colour and tactility—offering places to sit, rest, and touch. Yet this softness is never neutral: it is wielded as a method of resistance. The installations encourage lingering, slowness, and exchange. They make room for vulnerability without flattening its complexity. In “soft conversations“, this method unfolds even further. To quote Page Not Found’s artistic director Ola Vasiljeva: “This exhibition is less about presenting discrete works than about extending an invitation: to enter a zone where artistic processes are not hidden away but remain visible, entangled, gestating.”

    afra eisma (b. 1993) works in The Hague and Amsterdam (NL). Eisma creates immersive interactive installations with large scale tapestries and colorful ceramics. Using bright colors and playful approaches to engage with darker emotions and experiences is a recurring method. Garments veil activist slogans, a stomach becomes a container for rumblings, large scale tapestries invite you to sit and rest on, feel and cuddle and gently engage. Eisma creates room for anger, ambiguity and reflection. Alongside Eisma’s artistic practice, the artist is involved in various activist initiatives. Recent solo exhibitions include: ICA San Diego, San Diego, US (2025); The Tetley, Leeds, UK (2023);  Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, NL (2021); 1646, Den Haag, NL (2020). And group exhibitions include: Kunstmuseum, Den Haag, NL (2025); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, IN (2023); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, SP (2023); Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, BD (2023).

    This project is made possible with support from the Mondriaan Fund and the Municipality of The Hague.

    Image: a detail from afra eisma’s solo exhibition “soft conversations”. Photo by Iliana Michali, courtesy of afra eisma and Page Not Found.

  • Opening: Afra Eisma at Page Not Found

    On Tuesday 24 September, we open Afra Eisma’s new solo exhibition, soft conversations. Join us to celebrate the launch of her stunning new book, published by Page Not Found!