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Master Education in Arts (MEiA)

Date: 4 July 2026, 11:00 -18:00

Location: Kunstinstituut Melly, Space for Education and Participation, Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam

More than words, threads, bodies and corpses, lines/boundaries, kurá, gifts, baumschule, emergenc(y), conflicts, hormones, soil, ใจ, fetish, zichtbaarheid, subjectificatie, towers, pflegschaft, attrito, tension, nieuwsgierigheid, línguagem, رسائل,  bomen, papel, twists, zorg, keepsakes, comma, property, seeds, eggs.

Learning often begins around shared gestures, conversations, and moments of gathering. One of the first collective gestures of this group of art educators was the making of a colorful tablecloth assembled from pieces of fabric. Arranged and stitched the tablecloth has accompanied the students throughout their studies, becoming a surface for notes, impromptu observations, traces of conversations, and shared moments. More than a simple object, it gradually turned into both an affective archive and a testimony to the many encounters that shaped their time in class. Even more, it came to embody a way of learning practiced collectively throughout the programme: one that seeks to “dismantle the illusion that learning happens in isolation”. Through the convivial moments it hosted, this collective surface reveals learning as an ongoing process that moves through bodies, bellies, minds, and shared breath. In doing so, it remains plural, holding space for divergences, complexities, and the coexistence of different experiences and ways of knowing.

Rooted in this process, this group of students now bring their graduate research together for one day at MELLY exploring questions such as: What might a space that holds and nurtures such multiplicity and expresses such ways of learning look like? How can we weave spaces of belonging for others into institutional structure and shared community life? The works on display and the programme of public activities engage with these questions by creating a space that nurtures conversations, encounters, and situated and embodied forms of learning, open to all. We warmly welcome you to join us!

Participating students: Axel Coumans, Mariz Cortez, Alice Degelow, Heidi van Gorp, Femke van Heijningen, Ana Rita Leitão, Paulina Martina, Marie Panken, Carlo Pareti, lisa peake (lotus), Mariana Jorge Dos Santos, Maite Vanhellemont

Master Experimental Publishing (XPUB)

We, the 2024-2026 graduating students of the Experimental Publishing (XPUB) Masters course of the Piet Zwart Insititute, warmly invite you to:

Turning it off and on again

– our Grad Fest at Agnes Circulaire MaakPlaats.

Date: 3-5 July 2026

Opening hours:

Location: Agnes Circulaire Maakplaats (the space formerly hosting SCRAP in the Zomerhof district), Schoterbosstraat 6C, 3032 CN Rotterdam.

Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design (MIARD)

Dates: July 8 –11 2026

Opening hours:

Wednesday July 8 from 11.00 -18.00
Thursday July 9 from 11.00 -18.00
Friday July 10 from 11.00 – 21.00
Saturday July 11 from 11.00 – 18.00

Location: Kunstinstituut Melly, Witte de Withstraat 50, 3012 BR Rotterdam.

‘Playlist for Our Funeral’ is an exhibition of works by the graduates from the Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design (MIARD) at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. 

In the first semester of our second year of MIARD, Davin Im placed an A3 piece of paper on the door to our shared studio space with the prompt ‘What song would play at your funeral?’. This question faced each of us multiple times a day as we entered and exited the studio. We gradually added to this piece of paper, contemplating our own moment of departure,  and wondering how that could be expressed through one song, without the knowledge this list would move further than this door. The list became a playful moment of reprieve from the spaces we were so deeply absorbed by in our own research practices. This soundtrack now acts as a non physical space in which we all accidentally exist together, the tracks represent not the combination of work on show, but the mix of individual practices, interests, and personalities.

Participating students: Vishnu Priya Chakravarthi, Hyeryeong Choe, Marta Domínguez Bretaña, Alma Rose Fensholt, Francesca Farina, Matthieu Henry, Johanne Hjort-Larsen, Dabin Im, Orla Kelly, Eilish Rodden, and Yu-Hsin Chang.

Master Lens-Based Media

Dates: July 9-12 2026

Opening hours:

Thursday July 9 from 18.00 – 22.00
Friday July 10 from 12.00 – 18.00
Saturday July 11 from 12.00 – 18.00
Sunday July 12 from 12.00 – 16.00

Locations: & UBIK/WORM, Boomgaardsstraat 69, 3012 XA Rotterdam (entrance on July 9) & V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, Eendrachtsstraat 10, 3012 XL Rotterdam (entrance on July 9, 10, 11 and 12)

Stills that move. Hold on a second —
Ten artists working across moving image, photography, animation, and expanded lens-based practices
would like to invite you to their exhibition. From the position that knowledge is unstable, the artists
observe and set their perspectives in motion.
— and still, they move.

Participating students:

Sofie Blom – Where Daffodils Bend

Where Daffodils Bend follows two changing coastlines. In Zeeland, a researcher traces drowned lands
where images are made from seaweed and fixed with salt until they fade again. In Normandy, mysterious
streams carry an old church back toward high tide, while a buried pianist longs for his bones to be
washed clean by the sea.

Öncü H. Gültekin – Migrant Bodies

Focusing on first-generation working-class Turkish migrants in Rotterdam, whose memories are fading
due to dementia, this experimental short documentary observes what still remains of their presence while
embarking on a journey inside an abandoned factory filled with memories.

Feline Hjermind – Three Brothers

In a small Dutch town, three buildings stand opposite each other: a medieval castle, a modernist
apartment block and a contemporary family house. Three Brothers is an attempt to draw out the agency
of these spaces, by choreographing a relationship between them. Engaging with our surroundings as
more than backgrounds, the installation traces how architectural optimism often fails to sustain actual
lived life.

Toto Kersten – Where Europe begin, Where Europa Ends (aka Rotterdam)

On the edge of Europe, Toto embarks on a voyage through Rotterdam, circling a stranded cruise ship and
a wandering captain. Drifting between researcher, captain and spectator, he moves through archival
echoes, media fragments and absurd encounters, caught between departure, arrival and Europe’s
maritime imagination.

Enrico Piffer – Register: A Lost Necklace

A found sign of a lost necklace becomes the starting point for an unresolved search. Through moving
image, testimonies, and sculpted surfaces, Register: A Lost Necklace follows loss as it moves between
people, landscapes, and images, asking if what has disappeared can remain materially present.

Mikhail Sapozhnikov – Nikolas Archive

This archive-based installation presents the personal photo archive of Nikolas Kolovos that was passed
on to me. Alongside scanned colour positive slides, the archive includes dozens of envelopes from
photographic laboratories containing printed 10×15 photographs and original film negatives. These
materials reveal the physical structure of a private archive and reflect on preservation, circulation, and
personal memory.

Julia Schmidt – The First Lunar Abortion

Five minutes before the first moon landing, the Apollo Guidance Computer sends out five error messages
in an attempt to abort the Apollo 11 mission. In the short film, the resistance of the computer is informed
by the women who wove its hardware and the fact that the term computer used to refer to predominantly
women solving mathematical problems.

Lilian Wolter – MEAGAIN

Meagain originates as a short film set in a household ruled by repetition. In it, a mother spends her days
peeling apples, while her daughter, Meagain, is obliged to eat them under her strict watch. Forbidden from
eating the peel, Meagain spends her days covering the fruits with the wallpaper from her room.

Wenxuan Xu – Geofence, Simulawn, Stream Of A Stream, Touch Grass In Case Of Emergency

The buffer zone between chaotic nature and controlled perimeter, our human tendency to tailor nature in
our surroundings according to our vision, a domesticated version of wilderness where it should be
harmonious and inconspicuous, where you can touch grass in peace. It requires constant monitoring,
management, and maintenance. Where you might notice the seams.

Yuan Yuan – Golden Bitterness

Moving across diverse Dutch landscapes and non-places, a displaced entity searches for belongings
while past trauma surfaces. Here, images like the entity are continuously shattered and reassembled,
along with the fragmented experience that trauma brings. Once again, striving within the monumental
system, to reclaim a whole, natural being.

Master Fine Art

Dates: Friday 19 June – Sunday 5 July

Opening: Friday 19 June, 18:00 – 20.30, speeches at 18.00
Opening hours: Monday – Sunday 12:00 – 18:00

Location: TENT, Coolhaven 32, 3024 AC Rotterdam

TENT and the Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art invite you to the graduation show of the MFA graduating class of 2026: Piet Zwart Institute Master Fine Art presents: ‘Leisure Management’. Be among the first to experience the emergent practices of these artists whose works take shape through a wide range of materials, techniques, and discourses and which tend to notions of socially constructed spaces, the resonance of made and found materials, and multi-valent qualities of identity.

Participating students: Szilvia Bolla, Giulia Crivellaro, João de Castro, Erin Donnelly, Sam Janssen, Chryso Amaya Michailidis, Ambrose O’Meagher, Raziel Perin, Micha Prinsen, Noah van de Wetering. 

Master Design

Date: Thursday July 9 – Saturday July 11 2026

Opening Hours:
9 July: 12:00 – 22:00 
10 -11 July : 12:00 – 20:00 

Location: Katoenhuis, Keilestraat 9c, 3029 BP Rotterdam

The Master Design Research Graduation Show 2026

Explore the diversity of approaches to design research with this exhibition by our class of 2026. From work which asks us to reconsider the Dutch landscape, to textile work in Peru; from practices of not-knowing, to cultures of care and repair. We look at messages to and from our future selves and investigate practices of inclusion on multiple levels, for today and tomorrow.

Featuring graduates: Emer Beamer, Sandra Cortez, Martine Heemskerk, Pam Hermelink, Stef Kolman, Raisa Mulder, Tanja Ubert, Jasmijn Vermue and Floor van der Wal