Today’s entwined crises—from ecological catastrophe to the state of permanent warfare—reveal deep-seated wounds that issue from historical colonialisms and present-day authoritarianisms, economic disparity and growing racial violence, and the abuses inflicted on vulnerable populations and the planet. As a counter to this disquieting chaos, Fragments of Repair offers a collection of textual and visual essays and conversations on decolonial repair as both a tool for and a method of engagement with the current state of the world. A comprehensive examination of the concept of repair, the publication prompts tactical political imaginaries—in and through art, thinking, and concrete action—as the means for prefiguring and enacting pathways toward a socially and ecologically just society.

With contributions by Norman Ajari, Kader Attia, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Maria Hlavajova, Wietske Maas, Catherine Malabou, Olivier Marboeuf, Achille Mbembe, Wayne Modest, Omedi Ochieng, Matteo Pasquinelli, Rachael Rakes, David Scott, Rolando Vázquez, Françoise Vergès, Elena Vogman, and Eyal Weizman.

We call for a city that provides space for everyone to fulfill their potential—a city where not every square meter is planned or programmed but where people have the freedom to shape their surroundings beyond commercial interests.

InterSpheres is the name we give to these unplanned zones inside and outside buildings, in public areas, and within oversized collective spaces. Is planning the unplanned a contradiction in terms? We don’t think so. A city without room for the unplanned becomes monotonous; the oxygen that fuels creativity runs out, control is tightened, and the sense of freedom wanes.

InterSpheres brings together diverse examples of the unplanned, the reclaimed, and the shared spaces a city urgently needs. The publication is a collaborative effort between architects Studioninedots, architectural historian Marieke Berkers, and graphic designer Sean van den Steenhoven and is accompanied with artworks by Wouter Stroet and Frans Parthesius.

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht is a base for art, theory, and social action. BAK is committed to the notion of art as a public sphere and a political space, and provides a critical platform for aesthetico-political experiments with and through art. BAK brings together artists, thinkers, and other members of the precarious classes to imagine and enact transformative ways of being together otherwise.

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst is a leading international platform for theoretically-informed, politically-driven art and experimental research. Based in Utrecht, BAK addresses the social, ideological, and environmental urgencies of the present by combining public programming and exhibition-making with research, learning, and talent development. Working with communities involved in arts, activisms, and academia—and bringing artists, scholars, and other members of the precarious classes together—BAK cultivates art as a public sphere and a space for aesthetico-political experiments.

Trans Europa Design Express – A Journey Through Five Design Collections at Designmuseum Den Bosch.

The exhibition offers a tour of five major European design clusters. Triennale Milano, mudac Lausanne, Design Museum Brussels, Designmuseum Danmark, and Domaine de Boisbuchet have each selected items from their distinctive collections to show at Design Museum Den Bosch. The museum is presenting Trans Europa Design Express as a way of thinking about the role of design in the museum and about the design museum of the future. Curated by Timo de Rijk with the support of special advisor Philip van Daalen. In collaboration with spatial designer Bart Guldemond. The exhibition is photographed by Peter Tijhuis.

Process - Design Drawings from the Rijksmuseum shows over 200 drawings made between 1500–1900 recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Rather than focusing on these drawings as individual works of art, the exhibition presents them as part of the process of designing and making of objects.

Commissioned and produced by Design Museum Den Bosch and curated by Senior Curator of Applied Arts at the Rijksmuseum, Reinier Baarsen. The exhibition is conceptualized and realized in close collaboration with spatial designer Bart Guldemond and photographed by Peter Tijhuis.

Meret Oppenheim: für dich – wider dich exhibition at Design Museum Den Bosch. Oppenheim was eighteen years old when she arrived in Paris, where she joined the group of Surrealists around André Breton. She achieved international fame just a few years later with her fur-covered cup and saucer (Object (Déjeuner en fourrure), 1936) and the photographs that Man Ray and Dora Maar took of her. She enjoyed the attention, but also suffered from the pressures of fame. In the late 1930s, she withdrew from the art world, disillusioned. Oppenheim only returned to the spotlight, now brimming with confidence, in 1954. Right until her death, she continued to produce works that explore the boundaries of the visible and the invisible, of reality and imagination. Meret Oppenheim: für dich – wider dich features both her early, Surrealist work and her later sketches, objects, jewellery, poems and costumes. Design Museum Den Bosch has the largest collection of work by Meret Oppenheim in the Netherlands, supplemented by a number of loans for the exhibition. Curated by Adrienne Groen. In collaboration with Bart Guldenmond. Exhibition photography by Peter Thijhuis.

Pride Photo Award is a platform for inspiring stories about sexual and gender diversity. By sharing these images and the stories they tell in various locations, we create a space for dialogue. Thus we empower marginalized groups, stimulate people to critically review their ideas and convictions, and create a greater freedom for people to be themselves.

For the 2019 contest, 409 photographers from all over the world submitted nearly 3.800 photos. The contest had four categories: Single Images, Stories, an Open category, and the 2019 theme category Unique.

With works by: Anja Matthes, Blake Little, Carloman Macidiano, Céspedes Riojas, Chiara Luxardo, Corinne Mariaud, Hotli Simanjuntak, Keiji Fujimoto, Koen Suidgeest, Marc Ohrem-Leclef, Micha Serraf, Mickey Aloisio, Nelson Morales, Seungwook YANG, Ugo Woatzi, and Vaughan Larsen. In collaboration with sjondebaron.

Mapping Modernity is an exhibition that tells the story of our world in 250 maps. The history of modernity is one of control: over nature, populations and trade flows. Human beings placed themselves at the centre of the universe and used maps in an attempt to dominate a complex, elusive reality. Every map offers a glimpse into the mindset of those who commissioned it and the ways in which they sought to mould the world to suit them.

Mapping Modernity is the crowning achievement of the passionate collectors John Steegh and Harrie Teunissen. Over the past 40 years, they have collected over 19,000 maps and 2,500 atlases between them. Every inch of space in their home in Dordrecht is covered with maps. In 2021, they donated their collection to Leiden University, which called it outstanding and ‘probably the most extensive private map collection in the Netherlands’. For this exhibition, they worked with Design Museum Den Bosch to select 250 maps that tell the story of our modern world. A world in which human beings placed themselves at the centre and believed that they could assert their control over everything.

The exhibition was curated by senior curator Yassine Salihine, in collaboration with John Steegh and Harrie Teunissen. The exhibition design was provided by Bart Guldemond. Photography by Peter Thijhuis.

Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice combines handbook, dictionary, and anthology, and gathers artistic and cultural practices that are propositional, collective, and centered on the yearning for a just life-in-common. While future-oriented, these practices abandon a “universal” progressive route forward, instead enlivening a different chronopolitics: that of the not-yet. Powered by imagination-as-practice and the commitment to decolonial futurity, the contributors—among them artists, scholars, activists, poets, writers, and organizers—reflect on and propose forms of practicing equitable life in relation with one another, Earth, and time; models for safer spaces for humans and nonhumans; ways of radically shifting policies and planetary priorities; and tactics and methods of creating sanctuary. 

Toward the Not-Yet: Art as Public Practice, edited by Jeanne van Heeswijk, Maria Hlavajova, and Rachael Rakes, includes contributions by: Yasmin Ahmed, Grace Lostia, Ying Que, and the basic activist kitchen; Barby Asante; Athena Athanasiou; Clara Balaguer and Gabriel Fontana; Chloë Bass; Aimee Carrillo Rowe; Carolina Caycedo; Merve Bedir; Black Quantum Futurism (Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips); Dhanveer Singh Brar and Louis Moreno; David Bravo, Miguel Robles-Durán, and Urban Front; Allan deSouza; Nicoline van Harskamp; Adelita Husni-Bey; Rosalba Icaza; Walidah Imarisha; Hamada al-Joumah and Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh; Nancy Jouwe; Elke Krasny; Sandra Lange; Joy Mariama Smith; Francesca Masoero and QANAT; Lorenza Mondada; Lisa Myers; Carmen Papalia; Elizabeth A. Povinelli; Laura Raicovich; Hafiz Rancajale; Jonas Staal; Ultra-red; Françoise Vergès; We are Here; and Carol Zou. Published by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London, 2021

On the first floor of the mansion, the Centraal Museum presents exhibitions where the power of art is leading. “Artist-driven”, which means that each artist gets an open stage to present work and wishes in interaction with the historic rooms. This is how this historic country estate is made into a current sanctuary, where both art lovers and park visitors are treated to a special art experience.

The Centraal Museum is no stranger to the mansion. At the end of the eighties, when things were getting tough, some museum staff took care of the mansion and organized exhibitions there. Arjan den Boer wrote a blog about the museum history of Oud Amelisweerd. With this series of exhibitions, the Centraal Museum is once again contributing to keeping this Utrecht heritage alive, thereby giving visitors a treat for art. The graphic identity of Centraal Museum X Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd is designed by Lesley Moore. Since 2023 sens has the opportunity to cook with this well-designed recipe.

BAK BASICS: Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent (2019) and Deserting from the Culture Wars (2020). The readers in this series probe some of the most urgent challenges of our time, engaging them through theoretically informed and politically driven artistic research and practice. If BAK is conceived as a basis—a base where art and theory meet social action to collectively negotiate the social, political, environmental, and technological conditions in which we live and, more importantly, develop and actualize proposals for being together otherwise—then BASICS is its publishing equivalent. Published by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA and London.

At the RCMC, the flagship research institute of the Wereldmuseum, we have always been oriented toward the future. Our work is committed to contributing to the realisation of a more just and equitable world. Rather than clinging to optimism, or a belief that the world we would like to see will materialise, we have instead understood our task as one of doing the necessary work despite all the difficulties entailed by persistent coloniality, insidious racism and extractive practices that maintain our inequitable reality. The intensifying climate crisis and persistent xenophobia towards people hailing from places outside of the north Atlantic, that which has been conceived of broadly as the “West”, has landed the world and our connection to one another in peril. And it is precisely this sense of inhospitality, of insularity, that has profound bearing on what we consider to be the core purpose of the RCMC and our hopes for the future.