BRANKOPOPOVICBLOG: Rijksakademie Open Studios 2025

still from Astrit Ismaili film

The Rijksakademie Open Studios 2025 ran from May 22-25 during Amsterdam Art Week, opening the doors of this prestigious institution to showcase work by 50 international artists and five tech fellows from the 2024/2025 residency program. The entire building was packed with creative energy as visitors moved through diverse studio presentations, performances, film screenings, and artist talks.

It was undeniable that many artists were dealing with urgent questions of identity, resistance, and survival in contemporary society.

Astrit Ismaili's performance practice explores the transformational potential of bodies and spaces, using alter egos, body extensions, and wearable musical instruments to embody different possibilities for becoming. Their concept of "Creative Under Limitation" examines how creativity confronts physical and socio-political boundaries, asking what it means to "sonify a body politic." At the Open Studios, Ismaili presented "Flutura," a video and installation piece centered on kangë me tepsi - a sonic tradition where women sing into spinning pans, transforming domestic objects into musical instruments. Ismaili has been practicing this Albanian tradition from Kosovo's Rugova valley since 2016, initially mesmerized by its connection to their grandmother's singing style. In the film, they invite viewers to consider this sonic property as a precursor to contemporary voice processors, linking traditional practices to modern technology while exploring how voices can be amplified and transformed through everyday objects.

Erik Tlaseca uses his own body as material and agent, creating work that questions existing systems. His research into futurity and the impossibility of returning to origins has led him toward a trans-historic perspective, constructing new narratives to expose contemporary conflicts and contradictions. Similarly, Wynnie Mynerva's paintings function as erotic and synthetic fields of plastic exploration - vibrant extensions of their body that they describe as "bodily possibilities" rather than mere fictions. Their work operates both pictorially and performatively, treating pigment on fabric and plastic as equivalent to bodily incisions, both serving as technologies for disrupting normative truths about sex and gender.

Sandra Poulson

Several artists addressed colonial legacies and marginalized voices. Cairo-Amsterdam based Abdo Zin Eldin creates "hauntologies" that summon histories deemed immemorial by ruling discourse, while Thato Toeba from Lesotho uses historical archives and architectural space to examine the continuing shadow of empire over the global south. Dicky Takndare's work brings urgent attention to the situation in Papua, where human rights violations continue largely unnoticed while local populations face threats from military violence and forced displacement.
Sandra Poulson takes an archaeological approach to Angolan codes and cultural objects, untangling histories, oral traditions, and geopolitics through domestic furniture - vintage Dutch pieces made of tropical wood possibly sourced from Angola, and 'American-Style' furniture made in China from veneered chipboard. These objects capture the precarious moment of Angolan independence from Portugal, followed by civil war. Her work "This bedroom looks like a Republic" - titled after a once-common Angolan saying used by the artist's father comparing chaotic nation-building to a messy room - examines how intimate spaces become arenas for political consciousness and challenges how ideological symbols circulate when detached from their original contexts through commodification.

The theme of creating alternative archives emerged across multiple practices. Bangladesh-based Ashfika Rahman collaborates directly with marginalized communities to create living archives that resist erasure, reimagining mythology and folk tales through contemporary social issues. Eniwaye Oluwaseyi's paintings reveal psychological spaces where black bodies can thrive or rebel, his layered compositions reflecting the continuous adaptations required in new environments.

The relationship between technology and identity emerged as another significant thread. Li Yi-Fan stages what he calls "death matches" between artist and software, developing his own DIY video production tools that rival industry capabilities. His work "What Is Your Favorite Primitive" (2023), presented as a parody of tech keynotes, explores how images have changed communication and speculates that video technology could construct new politics of life. Similarly, Cuban artist Nestor Siré probes how technological infrastructures shape everyday social life, translating informal circuits and vernacular hacks of the Global South into interactive installations that reveal grassroots alternatives to dominant techno-economic paradigms.

Kaili Smith

Other compelling works included Ada Maricia Patterson's multidisciplinary practice connecting storytelling with survival strategies, Chathuri Nissansala's examination of gender and nationalism in Sri Lanka, Kaili Smith's evolution from realism to surrealism inspired by Chaos Theory, Amsterdam-based Joanne Igbuwe's exploration of culture and identity through photography, drawings, and 3D media, Lili Huston-Herterich's research into puppetry as dialogue-based knowledge transmission, and Lotte Werkema's "fictional accessories" that promise physical redemption while emphasizing its unattainability, working from her lived experience of disability.

The Rijksakademie Open Studios demonstrated how this residency program provides crucial space for artists working at the intersection of aesthetics and social justice, offering a rare glimpse into practices that are both deeply personal and urgently political. What emerged was a collective meditation on survival strategies - whether through Ismaili's sonic disruptions of gender norms, Rahman's collaborative archival resistance, or Werkema's ironic confrontation with ableist ideals. The work spans from intimate bodily interventions to broad institutional critiques, yet maintains a consistent commitment to centering voices and experiences typically marginalized by dominant cultural narratives. This is exactly the kind of urgent, boundary-pushing work that makes contemporary art essential as a tool for imagining more just and livable futures.

Residents 2024/2025 Fransisca Angela, nora aurrekoetxea etxebarria, AYO, Hamza Badran, Lisa Barnard, Bo Bosk, Avril Corroon, Choi Heong-uk, Naré Eloyan, Silvia Gatti, Krystel Geerts, Alexandra Hunts, Lili Huston-Herterich, Joanne Igbuwe, Astrit Ismaili, Jackie Karuti, Jort van der Laan, Eunsae Lee, Li Yi-Fan, Nazif Lopulissa, Lucas Lugarinho, Maksud Ali Mondal, Wynnie Mynerva, Chathuri Nissansala, Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, Ada Maricia Patterson, amy pickles, Sandra Poulson, Ashfika Rahman, Smári Róbertsson, Sallisa Rosa, Nestor Siré, Kaili Smith, Dicky Takndare, Erik Tlaseca, Thato Toeba, Hasan Özgür Top, Chin Tsao, vo ezn, Lotte Werkema, Jessica Wilson, Baha Görkem Yalım, Abdo Zin Eldin, Nataliya Zuban, and participants of the Pressing Matter programme.

More info: www.rijksakademie.nl