Exhibitions NOW

Contemporary Art Listings The Hague

Tag: Exhibition

  • Khaled Dawwa: Voici mon coeur! at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Khaled Dawwa: Voici mon coeur! at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    In 2025, in the context of Eighty Years of Freedom, Museum Beelden aan Zee will be presenting the installation Voici mon cœur ! (Here is my Heart), 2018-22 by the exiled Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa (1985). This six-meter long, contemporary war memorial from the Mucem’s collection has the form of a ruined exterior wall in a war-torn Damascus. Khaled Dawwa made the work from unfired clay, which gives it a more fragile appearance.

    The presentation of Voici mon cœur ! echoes the broader theme of the year of remembrance, in which local stories and various perspectives play a central role. Like traditional war memorials, Voici mon cœur also fulfils an educational function, serving as a means to create awareness and to stimulate dialogue about the impact of war and the importance of freedom. In this context Dawwa’s monument builds a bridge between past and present. While we reflect on the liberation of the Netherlands eighty years ago, his work offers a contemporary perspective of freedom and the lack of it. It reminds us that the struggle for freedom and human dignity does not end on a historical date, but is an ongoing process. The exhibition will be accompanied by a documentary about the artist.

    Curator: Dick van Broekhuizen.

  • Arno Hammacher: The Hammacher Archive at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Arno Hammacher: The Hammacher Archive at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Photographer and graphic designer Arno Hammacher (1927–2017) was the son of art historian Abraham Hammacher (1897–2002), director of the Kröller-Müller Museum from 1947 to 1963. Arno left his entire estate to Museum Beelden aan Zee. In 2017, the museum received various works of art, the archive, and the contents of his estate.

    Arno Hammacher worked and lived in Italy for a long time, moving to Milan in 1957. He trained at the predecessor of the Rietveld Academy, the Institute for Applied Arts Education in Amsterdam and the Royal Academy in The Hague, where he graduated in photography and graphic design in 1952. In the mid-fifties, he undertook study trips to Sicily, Calabria, and Sardinia. Before leaving for Milan, Hammacher worked at the Lettergieterij Amsterdam and studied for several years in London, where he became friends with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. He introduced Hepworth to his father. In 1962, Arno Hammacher traveled around the United States. In the late 1970s, he was a guest lecturer at his own Rietveld.

    Arno Hammacher has organized dozens of exhibitions in Italy. He also created photo reports for magazines, books, and catalogs and was responsible for their design. He exhibited his photographic work in galleries and museums. Recurring themes in his work are architecture, sculpture, and nature. In 2008, the Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci,” in collaboration with the Archivio di Stato di Milano, organized the successful retrospective exhibition Il punto di vista di Arno.

    The archive contains various materials: personal documents, photographic material, documentation of Arno Hammacher’s work, and artworks made by him. The archive is of general art-historical importance. The emphasis is on the Italian art world of the 1970s and 1980s, but material from the artist’s entire working life is present. His political left-wing signature is striking. He filmed and photographed during the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and worked in Cuba. As an artist, he was not only politically engaged but also fascinated by details in nature.

    This intimate exhibition has been organized to do justice to his legacy and to keep his name alive as an artist. Sketches, finished works, and works by other artists are displayed together, revealing Arno Hammacher’s broad and cultivated taste. In his photographic work, he was fascinated by the abstraction of enlarged details, a way of conveying his broad cultural and artistic vision to the viewer.

  • Ryan Gander: X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Ryan Gander: X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    In June, Museum Beelden aan Zee will be staging an exhibition which creates a dialogue between the work of the British visual artist Ryan Gander (1976) and that of the French painter and sculptor Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917). Since 2008, Gander has been working on a conceptual series in which he reinterprets Degas’ world-famous sculpture Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1881) and places her in a contemporary context. Gander’s sculptures liberate Degas’ fourteen year-old dancer from her pedestal and places her in various scenarios. The exhibition in Museum Beelden aan Zee will show Gander’s series of twenty-one ballerinas for the first time, and also in direct connection with Degas’ famous sculpture.

    Transition
    Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans marks the transition from classical to modern sculpture. The French artist not only captured the beauty of ballet life but also the tension between the discipline of dance and the vulnerability of youth with this sculpture of the young ballerina in a restrained and realistic pose. More than a century later, Ryan Gander reflects upon Degas’ work through a series of ballerina sculptures with poetic titles in unexpected or everyday situations. His reinterpretations raise questions about the idealization of the ballerina and the role of art in presenting reality versus fiction.

    Brigitte Bloksma, director of Museum Beelden aan Zee and curator of the exhibition: “The relationship between Degas’ original work and Gander’s approach offers a fascinating reflection on the perception of the ballerina and the subtle boundaries between art and everyday life. It shows how artists across time address themes such as movement, youth, and vulnerability.”

    New work
    Ryan Gander X Edgar Degas – Pas de Deux will be Ryan Gander’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. The exhibition is being made possible thanks to a collaboration with public and private collections worldwide which have lent their sculptures, as well as Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which has kindly lent us Degas’ Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (1880 – 1881/1922). Museum Beelden aan Zee has commissioned Ryan Gander to make a new ballerina, Waiting for timefall, or Living in a time where everything is possible, but nothing can happen, the last work in his series.

    A publication with a contribution by the artist is being published to coincide with the exhibition.

    Book your tickets at https://www.beeldenaanzee.nl/en/visit/buy-tickets

    Curator: Brigitte Bloksma

  • Tania Kovats: Oceanic at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Tania Kovats: Oceanic at Museum Beelden aan Zee

    Tania Kovats (b. 1966, UK) creates sculptures and drawings that explore our relationship with the natural world. Her work is characterised by a deep fascination with the elements, the universe, and ’mankind’s place within it. In Oceanic, Kovats focuses on the sea and water.

    At the heart of this presentation is the monumental series The Divers (2018). These figurative sculptures, cast in concrete using wetsuits as moulds, appear to dive into the museum floor. They reflect our fluid nature and raise questions about the limits of the body, the power of water, and our physical surrender to it. At the same time, the titles of the sculptures refer to iconic dancers from modern (sculptural) art, such as Isadora Duncan, Salome, and the ballerinas of Edgar Degas and Giacomo Manzù.

    Kovats’ latest works from the series Sea Marks are being shown alongside the sculptures. Using simple, repeated brushstrokes, she traces the horizon—the most meaningful line in the landscape for her—where sea and sky meet.

    Kovats’ work evokes a profound sense of connection with nature. It invites reflection, wonder, and renewed awareness of the rhythm of water—the element that carries, connects, and continually reshapes us.

    Curator: Brigitte Bloksma.

  • 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!

  • Jenna Sutela: Ave bossa, bow ole at Stroom

    Jenna Sutela: Ave bossa, bow ole at Stroom

    Date: 4 October 2025 – 9 January 2026
    Location: Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
    Opening: Saturday 4 October 2025, 17:00 hrs

    This fall, Stroom Den Haag proudly presents Ave bossa, bow ole, the first solo exhibition of Finnish artist Jenna Sutela in the Netherlands. The exhibition revolves around systems open to the wider environment—a world made of brains. It challenges the narrow understandings of consciousness that scaffold an anthropocentric logic of value and meaning, while considering interrelationships at all scales.

    The starting point of this exhibition is the concept of ’tech povera’, a makeshift genre that Sutela coined to describe her approach to technology in the context of art. It refers to the 20th century art historical movement Arte Povera that saw art as a living process rather than a fixed object and materials as meaning. Vermi-Cell (2023), a work presented underground at Stroom den Haag, serves as an example of this approach. An earth battery powered sound piece, staged inside and around heaps of worm compost with metals and wire emerging from them, uses energy from the organic, decomposing matter to present a work and as a work.

    At the same time as developing Ave bossa, bow ole, Jenna Sutela is preparing for her participation in the Venice Biennale in 2026, where she will exhibit in the Finnish Pavilion.

    Jenna Sutela (1983) is known for her extraordinary, collaborative practice in which biology and computation mutually question and reinforce each other. The works include chance elements and evolving structures, being both live and alive.

    The exhibition is made possible thanks to Frame Finland, the Mondriaan Fund, the Creative Industries Fund NL, the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, and the Municipality of The Hague.