Programme Opening Weekend

Official Opening
Park Sonsbeek, Molenplaats Sonsbeek
15.00–22.00

Join us for the official opening of Sonsbeek 2026: Ik hoef geen tuin, ik deel een park. The exhibition opens with performances, speeches, and music.

Performance
Jota Mombaça, the long language (Spiral) with ArtEZ student choir
Steile Tuin, Park Sonsbeek
16.00–16.30

Language: English
Ticketing: no

Jota Mombaça is an interdisciplinary artist whose work revolves around elemental forms of sensing and anticolonial imagination. Her new commission for Sonsbeek 2026 presents a scene in a multidisciplinary opera in which She remembers her voice again after a catastrophic cycle. On the opening night She is joined by a choir that brings together a cacophony of voices from the cosmos in the Steile Tuin.

Performance
nasa4nasa, Promises
Stadsvilla, Park Sonsbeek
20.00–20.20

Ticketing: no

nasa4nasa is a dance collective co-founded by dancers Noura Seif Hassanein and Salma AbdelSalam, foregrounding friendship, repetition, endurance, and the politics of visibility in (digital) space. First presented in 2024, their performance Promises takes the form of an improvisational score in which two bodies attempt to compose a listening field of sensitive proximity. Through slow, taut movements, they negotiate distance and tenderness, appearing and disappearing in relation to one another.

Performance
nasa4nasa, Promises
Stadsvilla, Park Sonsbeek
10.30–10.50

Ticketing: no

On a different day, with different light, sound and weather conditions, and a different state of mind, nasa4nasa performs Promises again. Two bodies move slowly and in close proximity against the backdrop of Park Sonsbeek and the city of Arnhem. Negotiating distance, tenderness, and visibility, their movements engage the park as a “third choreographer”, creating a field of heightened sensibility.

Curatorial Tour #1 (EN)
Starting Point: Stadsvilla, Park Sonsbeek
11.00–12.30

Language: English
Ticketing: yes, registration opens soon

Sonsbeek 2026 curators Amira Gad and Christina Li invite you on a guided tour of Park Sonsbeek, during which they give insight into the artworks presented in the park. The language of the tour is English. Sign-up required.

Curatorial Tour #2 (NL)
Starting Point: Molenplaats Sonsbeek, Park Sonsbeek
13.00–14.30

Language: Dutch
Ticketing: yes, registration opens soon

Sonsbeek 2026 assistant curator Berber Meindertsma and Sonsbeek art projects director Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg invite you on a guided tour through Park Sonsbeek, where they give insight into the works presented there. The language of the tour is Dutch. Sign-up required.

Artist Spotlight Talk
nasa4nasa & Jota Mombaça
Focus Filmtheater
16.00–17.00

Language: English
Ticketing: yes, registration opens soon

Dancers Noura Seif Hassanein and Salma AbdelSalam from nasa4nasa and artist Jota Mombaça come together in conversation about their understanding of memory as relational, and remembering as an act of bodily attunement. Moderated by Sonsbeek 2026 curator Amira Gad, the discussion explores the position and significance of the landscape within their work, which they — separately from each other — have referred to as “the third body” or “the third choreographer”.

Additionally, nasa4nasa’s film promises b2b (2021) will be screened. In these videos, originally made for Instagram, nasa4nasa uses their physical rehearsal room, their studio, and the Faiyum desert west of the Nile as displaced stages to further explore distance as a third party within their choreography.

Special Viewing at POST
Artists: Forensic Architecture and Korakrit Arunanondchai
POST
19.00–22.00

Language: EN/NL
Ticketing: no

Join us for drinks, music, and a late-night exhibition viewing of works by Forensic Architecture and Korakrit Arunanondchai at Sonsbeek 2026 partner venue POST, an art space in the centre of Arnhem. With welcome remarks by POST and the Sonsbeek 2026 curatorial team.

Artist Spotlight
Morning Viewing and Talk about Esma Yiğitoğlu’s Work
Museum Arnhem
11.00–13.00

Language: EN/NL
Ticketing: yes, registration opens soon

Presented in collaboration with Museum Arnhem, Sonsbeek invites you for a morning viewing of Esma Yiğitoğlu’s sculptures followed by a talk that dives deeper into the work of the late artist.

Esma Yiğitoğlu was a Turkish-Dutch artist (b. 1944, Zincidere, Türkiye; d. 2009, Rotterdam) known for work drawing on Sufi philosophy, Islamic architectural forms, vernacular building traditions, and Western art history.

Wouter Welling, the widower and caretaker of Yiğitoğlu’s artistic estate, joins artist Müge Yilmaz and researcher and curator Nesli Gül in conversation about her practice. Together they uncover the many layers of her work, including her role in founding the first Turkish Cultural Centre for Women in the Netherlands, and how she continues to inspire new generations of artists from Turkey in the Netherlands.

Breakfast is available for purchase at the museum café.

Procession & Tabbouleh Picnic
And Europa fled by Mounira Al Solh
Park Sonsbeek
14.00–16.00

Language: EN/NL
Ticketing: no

With music, dance, painted canvases, Phoenician boats, and freshly chopped tabbouleh, Mounira Al Solh’s sculpture And Europa fled is welcomed into Park Sonsbeek. Visitors are invited to participate in the procession and afterwards share tabbouleh together on picnic blankets surrounding the sculpture.

Mounira Al Solh grew up during the Civil War in Lebanon that began in 1975, since which time violence has been inflicted on the country from all sides — most recently in March 2026, when foreign military bombardment resumed and over a million people were displaced within days. One of those displaced was Al Solh’s friend George Barbour, an expert boat constructor, who temporarily stayed with her. To keep him occupied, she asked him to make Phoenician boats of various sizes — one of which balances atop the figure’s head. The others are brought in on this occasion and placed on and around the picnic blankets where tabbouleh will be served.

Special Viewing at Omstand
Artists: Ipeh Nur and Jumana Manna
Omstand
17.00–22.00

Language: EN/NL
Ticketing: no

Join us for drinks, music, and a late-night exhibition viewing of works by Ipeh Nur and Jumana Manna at the artist-run space and Sonsbeek 2026 partner venue Omstand. The artists and the Sonsbeek 2026 curatorial team will be present to further elaborate on the works on display.

Family Walking Tour with Fanja Bouts: deepmapping Sonsbeek 2026
Molenplaats Sonsbeek
10.00–11.30

Language: EN/NL
Ticketing: yes, registration opens soon

Over the course of Sonsbeek 2026, artist Fanja Bouts invites audiences — children from 4 years old included — to join her in creating a deep map of the park. Informed by her studies in physics and environmental sciences, Bouts is invested in mapping the intricacies of systems of human and more-than-human worlds.

Deep maps move away from traditional cartography, where landscapes are often presented from an anthropocentric and extractive viewpoint. Instead, attention is given to the wider range of meanings landscapes can hold for humans and more-than-humans alike.

Bouts created a booklet with prompts and questions accessible to children, encouraging reflection and broader perspectives on the park. On Sunday 5 July, she activates this booklet for the first time during a guided family tour through the park and past the elements of her Sonsbeek 2026 commission.

Writing Workshop with Loesje
Plaatsmaken
12.00–13.00

Language: Dutch
Ticketing: yes, registration opens soon

The fictional character, and the writers’ collective behind Arnhem-based Loesje, are known for the thousands of posters they have released featuring critical yet optimistic slogans reminding us that collective action is possible. Each slogan is crafted during creative writing and brainstorming sessions following the so-called “Loesje writing method”.

On 5 July, visitors are invited to try their hand at the method and contribute to Loesje’s legacy during a large-scale writing workshop at Plaatsmaken.

Artist Spotlight Talk
Afaina de Jong
Park Sonsbeek, east entrance of the park
14.00–15.00

Language: Dutch
Ticketing: no

Inside her installation Future Untold, Afaina de Jong and Sonsbeek 2026 assistant curator Berber Meindertsma discuss the meaning of placemaking within her work and in relation to Sonsbeek’s title Ik hoef geen tuin, ik deel een park.

Within De Jong’s practice, placemaking is a critical method of intervening in public space by hosting voices and cultural practices that are often overlooked.