Sonsbeek 2026 x Hartwig Art Foundation: A Closing Gathering at Hartwig Proxy

On 11 October, the last day of Sonsbeek 2026, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven's Mystic Hexagram unfurls. For a hundred days the carpet of 32,940 flowers and herbs has grown on Arnhem's Stadhuisplein as a double spiral; now its plants spread into homes across the city and beyond.

Two days later, on 13 October, remnants of the spiral arrive at Hartwig Proxy in Amsterdam, marking the close of the Sonsbeek 2026 x Hartwig Art Foundation program, over an evening of poetry and food made from the carpet's own herbs: words by Mia You and senakirfa A., drinks concocted by Mmm Money Pie, a shared soup by Anna Celda, and a cake baked by Van Kerckhoven — a salted 'space cake' of her own devising, with sage; the word comes from the Latin verb salvere, to be well or to save. Films by Sonsbeek 2026 artists Korakrit Arunanondchai, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Jota Mombaça and Larry Achiampong will be on view one last time in the video room.

The evening's music comes from Van Kerckhoven: a cosmic Sun Ra playlist, the one she had on while sketching and developing the spiral, and while handing out the flowers on 11 October. For her, the spiral is a healing form, one of the oldest we have, and art a force that works on us rather than a metaphor: hence herbs as well as flowers, and plants that carry their healing energy on into people's homes. Guests are welcome to adopt a plant, and to take home a sage seed paper with Van Kerckhoven's design, to plant the spiral again wherever they are: memory not preserved but propagated.

Photo: Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Mystic Hexagram (2026). Commissioned by Sonsbeek 2026 and Hartwig Art Foundation. Photo by Inez Ishizaki.