Dutch
Re-imagining as resistance. We leven in een tijd waarin onderdrukking vele vormen aanneemt – het smoort onze intuïtie, verbreekt onze verbondenheid en beperkt ons in wat we mogen of durven uitdrukken. Deze editie brengt nieuwe makers samen die zich verzetten tegen onderdrukking. Met hun werk geven ze ruimte aan verhalen, lichamen en stemmen die vaak zijn weggestopt. Door ritueel, beweging en verbeelding laten ze zien dat kunst niet alleen expressie is, maar ook een vorm van verzet en een manier om een andere wereld voor te stellen.
Chun Shing Au onthult het stille verzet dat schuilt in gecensureerde woorden en transformeert stilte tot getuigenis. Marah Haj Hussein en Nur Garabli volgen de lijn van grootmoeder tot dochter en reclaimen het vrouwelijke lichaam als plek van veerkracht onder bezetting. Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura roept de kracht van haar voorouders en innerlijke wijsheid aan om intuïtieve vermogens te ontwaken en dominante normen te bevragen.
Wat als macht niet draait om controle, maar om zorg? Wat als we kiezen voor gratie in plaats van hebzucht, en voor verbondenheid in plaats van ongelijkheid? Wat als bevrijding niet begint met antwoorden, maar met de moed om te voelen, te luisteren, en te spreken vanuit plekken die te lang zijn genegeerd?
Re-imagining as resistance. We live in a time where oppression operates on many levels—silencing intuition, severing connection, and constraining bodies, stories, and spirits. This edition brings together artists who confront these invisible yet pervasive forces, by continually searching for creative ways to rupture, reclaim, and reimagine.
Chun Shing Au reveals the quiet resistance hidden in censored words and unseen gestures, transforming silence into testimony. Marah Haj Hussein and Nur Garabli move through the intimate lineage of grandmother–mother–daughter to reclaim the female body as a site of resilience under occupation. Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura invokes ancestral knowledge and spiritual power to awaken suppressed instincts and challenges dominant norms.
Together, these voices ask: What if we shift power from control to care, from greed to grace and inequality to belonging? What if liberation begins not with answers, but with the courage to feel, to listen, and to speak from places long denied?
Meet the makers
Chun Shing Au
Marah Haj Hussein & Nur Garabli
Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura
Installations
Establishing a dialogue with the live performances, this curated collection of installations embodies this year's theme, re-imagination as resistance, inviting you to wander, listen, and engage in new ways.
Drukken + Persen + Knellen
Fay van Erp is an Amsterdam-based scenographer at Theater Rotterdam. For Welcome To Our Guesthouse she shapes the building’s spatial design and pathways around the verbs compress and squeeze, embracing the idea that beautiful things are born under pressure.
Fay’s work is meant to be explored — let your hands, eyes, and curiosity guide you through the building.
The Centre Cannot Hold
Andreas Tegnander is a Norwegian sound artist, composer, and sculptor whose work moves between gallery, theatre, and cinema. In The Centre Cannot Hold, he explores the beauty of collapse and transformation, where tension gives rise to resonance and dissonance becomes harmonious. The work unfolds as a tactile, shifting soundscape—an invitation to look into chaos and find the quiet awe within its constant metamorphosis.
Home is Where I Grief
Hooi-Ying Ash Zhang is an interdisciplinary artist based in Rotterdam exploring Chinese diaspora identities and themes of love, grief, loneliness and queerness. Their piece Home is Where I Grief is a constellation of visual poems that trace their research into grief. Drawing on string theory and Buddhist ideas of life, death, and reincarnation, Hooi-Ying deconstructs grief across space, time and generations. The work is a collage in method and material using personal stories and a provocative visual language to find a home in between worlds and timelines—a space in which this grief feels tangible.
Uprooted
Jemima De Jonge is a visual artist based in Rotterdam. In Uprooted, viewers wander a dark, empty city in a single continuous shot through paper-andcharcoal maquettes; at unexpected moments a few clothes and an apple appear on a crisscrossing clothesline, offering guidance amid strangeness, while passing windows hint at worlds just out of reach.
Khorshid | Sun
“I dance in their flames. I am the firebird. I am Khorshid. And I ignite.”
Roshanak Marrowatian is a movement artist from Iran, now based in the Netherlands. In Khorshid | Sun—inspired by the phoenix, the myth, the fire, the rise—she crafts a dance film of rebirth and revolt, a tribute to women fighting for the freedom to move, learn, sing, and soar: from ashes they rise, unbroken and unstoppable.
