Opening – W139

Opening PPP

Join us on Friday 23 May from 19:00 for the opening of W139’s new exhibition: PPP!

This spring, the Sunflower Soup collective brings PPP to life—a Political Party for Potatoes and other beings. PPP transforms W139 into a site of collective practice: an open workspace where you are welcome to make and share!

While the potato plays a leading role within the party, the P’s are open to many interpretations: PPP could stand for Protorealist Pan-Political Project, Practical Party of Provocation, or Pansexual Potato Phantasy. This way the PPP functions as a pluriform platform for overlooked or obscured perspectives and aims to be a refuge for those who challenge the current political status quo.

Through a comprehensive workshop programme PPP will gradually expand further over the course of two months. A multitude of collectives, makers, and visitors will collaboratively explore the politics of the potato and contribute to the PPP. As well as being playful and speculative, PPP will become a real physical place of political imagination and connection, proposing alternatives to the ways contemporary politics are shaped. Find out more about the workshop programme soon on our website!

Sunflower Soup was born out of a shared activist engagement and a need to explore what art can mean beyond the confines of the individual.

PPP is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Mondriaan Fund and the Cultural Participation Fund.

Visual identity by June Jungeun Yang.

FLUSH #6: NO PARES (SIGUE SIGUE)

PRODUCE, HAVE FUN, IMPROVE AND SMILE! by Sergi Casero

Like hamsters on a wheel, we run in a race that has no finish line – because every now and then another goal appears on the horizon. This performance is for everyone who feels overwhelmed by too many responsibilities and activities. For those who are learning a new language, playing an instrument, obsessively setting goals and making to-do-lists, or in a constant quest for fulfilment, self-development and being a better version of themselves. Every second counts! In an achievement society doing nothing is a grave sin. But we are more than the sum of our achievements, or are we? How does the productivity obsession shape our desires, our bodies and our limits?

Through the structure of a spinning class, NO PARES (sigue sigue) confronts the hidden violence within neoliberal ideals of efficiency, self-optimization, and endless improvement.

How did we buy the neoliberal tale that we are the architects of our own fate?
Can we resist? Can we break free from the inertia of productivity and its seductive pull?

Join us for this participatory performance – an opportunity to reflect and endure.

Doors open — 18:30
Performance — 19:30
End — 20:30

The artist is supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts

FLUSH: a sudden rush of intense emotion is a flourishing collaboration between Espacio Estamos Bien and W139, located in the toilets of W139. FLUSH operates as a flexible form of organizing and creating, enabling various types of collaboration. FLUSH aims to foster inter-local relationships, viewing Amsterdam as a hub for facilitating diverse interactions and building connections that bridge distances. Joyful, friendly and decentralized connections extend beyond the Amsterdam art scene.

Curatorial Text: José Rosales
Production: Julia Nowicka and Espacio Estamos Bien
Design: Sergi Casero

Opening Re-arrangement of Priorities

With 2025 marking the 20th anniversary of the collective, Rainbow Soulclub is returning to W139, where they first exhibited in 2007, to celebrate and situate this moment in time. This exhibition brings together works that have been created over years of collaboration, while simultaneously making visible that which forms between the making of work, together, over so long: a family that started as strangers.

Rainbow Soulclub is an art and solidarity collective founded in 2005 by visual artists Saskia Janssen and George Korsmit. Composed of makers and thinkers coming from different social, economic, and cultural backgrounds, they meet regularly at the collective studio in the drop-in centre of Stichting De Regenboog Groep, an organisation in Amsterdam dedicated to people experiencing homelessness, addiction, poverty, and the challenges that come with undocumented status.

Working from an ever-expanding and ever-changing organic model, without agendas, hierarchies and expectations, the Rainbow Soulclub puts at its centre the idea that every human being has the capacity for expression, even in complex and often self-diminishing circumstances.

This exhibition is generously supported by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and Mondriaan Fund.

Opening Taking Root Among the Stars

Join us for the opening of Taking Root Among the Stars! With colour-morphing cocktails, a feminist sci-fi book selection by San Serriffe, and a special opening ritual by Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti. Through her sonic and performative work, Ibelisse will bring together the worlds present in this exhibition—from the depths of the ocean to the edges of space. After the opening at W139, the celebration continues at nachbar, where a special playlist has been curated for the exhibition at the bar area.

Taking Root Among the Stars, initiated by Müge Yilmaz and Anna Hoetjes, is an exhibition that features the work of artists and writers who use science fiction not only as a theme in their work, but also as a tool to propose different social realities, alternative futures, and communal relations to nature.

As a platform for exchange at the intersection of art, literature, ecology, science, and activism, this exhibition claims speculation and its feminist possibilities. Bringing together works that are platforms of exchange in and of themselves, from feminist, queer, Black diasporic, and decolonial practitioners, the exhibition holds space for processes of worldbuilding by initiating dialogue, reflection, and interaction with the audience to help us imagine a radically different future—one we look forward to, one we don’t fear.

With works by AiRich, Black Quantum Futurism, Maartje Folkeringa, Anna Hoetjes, Adriana Knouf, Brittany Nelson, Ada M. Patterson, Sondi, Müge Yilmaz and Fei Yining.

Photography by Elodie Vreeburg.

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti is an Amsterdam-based multimedia artist who works as a vocalist, composer, performer, and healer. Born in Bolivia and raised in Brazil, she weaves her sonic and performative practices inspired by her latinx roots. Her work is deeply interwoven in post-colonial justice, the paradox and beauty between grief and celebration, Andean Cosmology as a source of reclamation, resistance and resilience. Embodiment embedded in sonic fabrics while speculating myths through word oracles. She is a neo-mestiza, a spiritual activist, a femme defender, and a Moon lover.

Opening Remarkable Meetings with Disgusting Men

You are invited for the opening night of Remarkable Meetings with Disgusting Men, a group exhibition initiated by EMIRHAKIN. During the night, there will be a performance by Andreas Tegnander & Ossip Blits, and Ottoman Hibiscus-Sherbets cocktails will be served. Bring your own flashlight (or a charged phone).

Reserve a time slot due to limited capacity.

In Diffracted Signals Andreas and Ossip will activate their artwork Copper Coils and engage with the vast and unseen network of electromagnetic fields present all around us. The performance is a dance with the intangible, where every movement alters the fields around the coils, generating an ephemeral soundscape. Andreas and Ossip play with forces that lie beyond the audible spectrum, orchestrating the field into a resonant, immersive carpet of sound, inviting the audience into a sensory reality that exists just beyond the reach of our ordinary senses.

Remarkable Meetings with Disgusting Men reflects on (self-)censorship as a highly tangible experience, ████ proposing ways for maneuvering through fear. ██████ ████ █ ███, ████. With works by Andreas Tegnander & Ossip Blits, Batuhan Keskiner, Can Demren, EMIRHAKIN, ghenwa noiré, Jonas Lerch, Ksenia Yurkova, Mohammed Tatour and Zalán Szakács.

Visual identity by EMIRHAKIN and Fadi Houmani.

Images by Elodie Vreeburg

FLUSH #1: Pega!

FLUSH: a sudden rush of intense emotion is a flourishing relationship between Espacio Estamos Bien and W139, growing from the toilets at W139. We envision this relationship as the mutualistic workings of microbiota, a symbiotic process allowing for different interactions to develop. The microbiome organisms (EEB and its co-operators) form communities within the host organism (W139), which provides space for the microbiota to inhabit and contribute in a big way despite its small format.

Located in the toilets of W139, FLUSH works as a flexible form of organizing and making, allowing for other types of collaboration. FLUSH aims to generate inter-local relationships, understanding Amsterdam as a base where different interactions can be facilitated, creating links that allow us to shorten distances. Connections that are joyful, friendly and decentralized, looking beyond the Amsterdam art scene.

Pega!, the inaugural exhibition of FLUSH, opens May 30th at 19:00. It’s the largest show ever hosted in a toilet, serving as a platform for experimental publication, which Pega! achieves using stickers. Created in collaboration with the anarchist and independent print shop Not Shit Print in Amsterdam, Pega! invites artists, activists, designers, and creatives worldwide to contribute their designs for the stickers that will be all over the bathroom.

We look forward to welcoming you in the toilets. Let’s flush together!

Visual identity by Miguel Cruz. Photography by Justine Ellul.

Opening Outside the Soup

W139 warmly invites you to the opening of the exhibition Outside the Soup, initiated by artists Afra Eisma and Hend Samir, on Friday 26 April from 19:00 to 22:00 at W139.

Outside the Soup brings together a large and diverse international group of artists who create narrative-based, highly visual works steeped in imagination. The exhibition will be activated through an extensive context- and community program of workshops and guided tours.

At 20:00, Rah Naqvi will perform their piece Soft Touch Men. During the Dutch premiere of this performance, Rah sets a stage similar to a men’s hair salon. In a vulnerable exchange, the artist deconstructs a masculinity that feels otherly. The artist sings a retribution ritual of song (in collaboration with musician Antigoni Seferli), while accepting touch, finding solace in this exchange, and exploring transness through the hands of their barber friend, who touches them the same, a man, or not.

With work by Soad Abdelrasoul, Kenneth Aidoo, Dagmar Bosma, Afra Eisma, Esraa Elfeky, Tessa Mars, Marzia Migliora, Hiroki Miura, Rah Naqvi, Karin Iturralde Nurnberg, Hend Samir, Afrah Shafiq, Meenakshi Thirukode, Marnix van Uum and Debbie Young.

Visual identity by Sheona Turnbull. Photography by Elodie Vreeburg.

Opening Verbogen Verbrijzeld

Verbógen Verbrijzeld onderzoekt hoe wit licht versplinterd en verbogen kan worden – hoe je met de materie kan samensmelten.

In de solotentoonstelling van Philip Vermeulen maak je kennis met zijn nieuw ontwikkelde ‘hyper-sculpturen’, die wit licht ombuigen en mechanisch verbrijzelen tot duizenden stukjes kleur. Het kleurengeraas, het indringende geluid en de wind van de snel draaiende machines geven je een intens fysieke ervaring. De werken gaan in een meta-compositie met elkaar in dialoog, waardoor je ondergedompeld zal worden in de dynamiek tussen mens en machine.

Philip Vermeulen, gevestigd in Den Haag, maakt als kunstenaar grootschalige installaties. In zijn werk manipuleert hij primaire natuurkundige verschijnselen als licht, geluid en beweging. Zijn installaties vormen een onophoudelijk onderzoek naar de veranderingen van psychologische zijnstoestanden. Vermeulen creëert wat hij ‘hypersculpturen’ noemt: kinetische sculpturen die met zo’n hoge snelheid bewegen dat de fysieke eigenschappen van de materialen waaruit ze bestaan in de perceptie van de toeschouwer lijken te veranderen.

Zijn werk is vertoond bij onder andere musea (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Rijksmuseum Twenthe), kunstruimtes (W139, Arti et Amicitae), clubs (Berghain Berlijn), media festivals (Novas Frequências Rio de Janeiro, Ars Electronica Linz, TodaysArt, CTM Berlijn) en in de open lucht (Into the Great Wide Open). In 2020 werd Vermeulen genomineerd voor de Volkskrant Beeldende kunst prijs en later in het jaar werd zijn installatie More Moiré² genomineerd voor een Gouden Kalf in de categorie Best Interactive 2020.

Deze tentoonstelling wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door Stroom Den Haag, Mondriaan Fonds, Gemeente Amsterdam, Kickstart Cultuur Fonds en PIP Den Haag.

Foto’s door Jeroen de Smalen.

Opening Sonic Acts Biennial 2024

Encompassing the curatorial underpinnings of the 2024 Biennial, the exhibition illuminates its themes of sensory encounters with the more-than-human, touching upon animatic beliefs, alchemic elements, and emotional cartographies. With works by Harun Morrison, Jota Mombaça, touche—touche, Annika Kappner, Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner, Brackish Collective, Pedro Matias, and Natasha Tontey. With a performative activation by Brackish Collective.

At 22:00, the Biennial opening will move to the nearby kanaal40 for a celebratory club night with Jessica Nightlife, Millie Rose Dobree, Money Lang, and Ingrate.

More information and tickets here.

Photography by Pieter Kers.

Opening Dead Skin Cash

Join us on January 27th from 19:00 for the opening of Dead Skin Cash, the upcoming exhibition by Salim Bayri and Ghita Skali at W139. Get money for your dead skin.

Photography by Elodie Vreeburg.