🎨 Great Exhibitions #21 — Three Palestinian Voices Across the Randstad 🇵🇸

#### Amsterdam → Rotterdam → Breda → (Den Haag) · Saturday 20 June 2026

Three exhibitions. Three cities. One day. And one of the most urgent conversations in contemporary art right now.

This chapter of Great Exhibitions is a special one. Right now, at least three Dutch institutions are showing the work of Palestinian artists — and rather than pick one, we're going to do something a little mad: see all three in a single day, travelling together by train across the Randstad.

It's a heavy subject, there's no pretending otherwise. The shadow of Gaza falls across all of it. But here's the thing that struck me: without human resilience and creativity, each of these shows would be a requiem — and yet none of them is. However heavy the subject, every single work bursts with vitality, defiance and hope. That's exactly why they belong together: three completely different artistic languages, circling the same questions of memory, survival and what it means to keep living.

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##### 🚉 The route

📍 10:00 — Amsterdam · Wereldmuseum Larissa Sansour — Rogue Agents of History
The first-ever Dutch presentation of this internationally acclaimed artist, in a sublime installation curated by Nat Muller. Sansour works in film, weaving myth, documentary and science fiction — and here the films spill out into the room as objects: historical loans (reliquaries, a hand-embroidered thobe from the 1890s), personal heirlooms, film props displayed like treasures. In Familiar Phantoms, a hypnotic 42-minute documentary, four generations of displacement flicker past like curtains moving in the wind. In her brand-new A Sunken Tale of Losses Delayed, a pirate ship sails across time, picking up Palestinian castaways from different eras — a dreamlike, fairy-tale world that loops the past into the present and back again.

Then we take the train together to Rotterdam.

📍 13:00 — Rotterdam · Kunstinstituut Melly Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme — Prisoners of Love: Until the Sun of Freedom
If Sansour is dreamlike, this duo hits hard. Half of Melly's upper floor becomes a pink-violet journey into the heart of darkness: Israeli prisons, and the testimonies of Palestinians held without trial — embedded not as literal interviews but woven into overlapping poetic images of landscapes, the sun, olive trees, a hand stirring through a spring. It's so absorbing an hour disappears before you notice. On the cell walls, a message left by the prisoner before you: "They will not be able to kill you, as long as you travel." Despite the anger, what radiates most is poetry and hope.

Then onward by train to Breda.

📍 15:30 — Breda · DeLoods Ahmed Aldaalsa, in the group show 'Silence = Violence'
A raw, artist-run space hosting a group exhibition curated by Joyce Overheul, gathering artists who can't freely speak in their countries of origin — some participating anonymously for their own safety. Among them, Ahmed Aldaalsa (b. 1999), living through the war in Gaza, who keeps a drawn diary of the destruction around him — charcoal and pencil on cheap, frayed paper, photographed and sent to the Netherlands, three works here screen-printed. In Dragging my tent, a home becomes a windblown tent hauled behind you on ropes. His figures have almost no mouths; their legs stop below the calf. Not for lack of paper — a deliberate, devastating choice. Where Abbas & Abou-Rahme are loud, Aldaalsa is silence itself. A fitting, defiant place to end the art day — and one of the show's very last open days.

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##### 🍽️ And then — dinner (optional)

For those who want to stay until the very end, we'll head back toward the Randstad to Den Haag for dinner at Shakshuka, one of the most interesting Palestinian restaurants in the Netherlands. We're talking a generous spread — creamy hummus, smoky mutabbal, fresh-off-the-plate pita, mezze meant to be shared — the kind of abundant, warm table where a long and intense day finally relaxes. More than that: it's a genuine safe space, where hospitality and generosity are the whole point, and where food is identity rather than just food. Exactly the right note to close on.

👉 If you'd like to join dinner, please indicate it in your RSVP — I'll then contact you privately with the exact booking details.

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##### ⏱️ A note on timing

The times above are indicative. They're there so anyone interested in seeing only one exhibition (or just part of the day) can join us at that point. But real-world logistics — trains, queues, how long we linger — mean things will shift. So if you plan to join only from Rotterdam or Breda, please message me on the day itself so we can coordinate.

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##### 🗓️ Practical info

• 📅 When: Saturday 20 June 2026 · from 10:00
• 📍 Start: in front of the Wereldmuseum, Amsterdam (Linnaeusstraat 2)
• 🚆 Getting around: we travel together by train — Amsterdam → Rotterdam → Breda → Den Haag. Bring an OV-chipkaart or a valid travel app.
• 🎟️ Tickets: each venue has its own admission; please sort your own. If you have Museumkaart, it's free.
• 🍽️ Dinner: optional, in Den Haag — flag it in your RSVP.
• 🌐 Language: English

What to bring: comfortable shoes, a train ticket/app, an open mind, and the willingness to sit with art that asks something of you.

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##### 👀 Who's this for?

Anyone drawn to art that engages with the world rather than retreating from it. You don't need to be an expert — come curious. Whether you do the full triptych across three cities or drop in for just one, you're welcome.

See you in front of the Wereldmuseum.