ARNHEM.- Arnhem will host the thirteenth edition of Sonsbeek, the large-scale recurring exhibition for art in public space. Taking place in Park Sonsbeek and at partner institutions in the city, Sonsbeek 2026 opens on 2 July and runs through 11 October 2026.

Sonsbeek 2026 is curated by Amira Gad and Christina Li, two internationally acclaimed curators based in the Netherlands, with assistant curator Berber Meindertsma. Known for their transnational perspectives and their commitment to artistic experimentation, Gad and Li bring extensive experience across artistic disciplines and institutional frameworks.

Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg, director of Sonsbeek art projects, says: “Amira Gad and Christina Li are invited for their courageous and precise curatorial vision. Together, they shape a bold artistic direction for Sonsbeek 2026, guiding the program into the future by addressing the urgent questions of our time through impactful projects that redefine what art in public space means today.”

Curatorial Vision

In 1949, the municipality of Arnhem initiated the freely accessible Sonsbeek exhibition to attract visitors to a city in recovery from the Second World War. More than seventy-five years later Sonsbeek continues to stake freedom as a horizon that can be reached through public art outside the confines of institutions. The exhibition reminds us of the possibility for renewal amid ruin, and the vital role culture plays in rebuilding a responsible, collective, and commons-driven civic life.

As curators, we are intrigued by Sonsbeek’s legacy of radical restarts and its fragile arc of survival. Each edition has redefined what art in public space can mean, reflecting shifting political and cultural conditions. For us, memory is not a matter of preservation but of transformation: a regenerative, continuous practice that shapes worldviews, constructs futures, and resists erasure. We understand our response through art as an intentional struggle against natural and social processes of forgetting.

For Sonsbeek 2026 memory is not approached as static or nostalgic, but as an unfinished, dynamic force that constantly reshapes who we are and how we live together. Remembering and forgetting are considered not as opposites, but interdependent processes that are selective, contested, and charged with power. Today, Arnhem and Park Sonsbeek remain layered sites where personal and collective histories and ecological rhythms converge. Against the backdrop of ongoing global conflict, displacement, and ecological crisis, the urgency of asking who gets to remember, and how, has only intensified.

Through new commissions, performances, and installations in Park Sonsbeek and at partner institutions, Sonsbeek 2026 will activate memory as a site of care, resistance, and imagination. International and Dutch artists will work in dialogue with Arnhem, its landscapes, and its communities during the just over one-hundred-day exhibition. Their works, from sculptures to installations, will critically and poetically examine mechanisms of remembering and forgetting, the politics of public symbols, and strategies of resilience.

The exhibition unravels memory as a space where forgetting and remembering interact; where loss and preservation act as complementary forces, enabling both rupture and renewal. The question is no longer how we represent the past, but how we live with it. —Amira Gad & Christina Li, Curators of Sonsbeek 2026

Participants

Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, London)*, Korakrit Arunanondchai (b. 1986, Bangkok)*, Alvaro Barrington (b. 1983, Caracas)*, Fanja Bouts (b. 1997, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)*, Forensic Architecture (est. 2010, London), Femke Herregraven (b. 1982, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)*, Afaina de Jong (b. 1977, Amsterdam)*, On Kawara (29,711 days), Loesje (est. 1983, Arnhem)*, Jumana Manna (b. 1987, Princeton, NJ), Jota Mombaça (b. 1991, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)*, nasa4nasa (est. 2016, Cairo), Ipeh Nur (b. 1993, Yogyakarta), Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, b. 1989, Dallas, TX)*, Sahej Rahal (b. 1988, Mumbai)*, Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978, Beirut), Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (b. 1951, Antwerp)*, Esma Yiğitoğlu (b. 1944, Zincidere, Türkiye; d. 2009, Rotterdam)

*Newly commissioned works for Sonsbeek 2026