FONTANA AMSTERDAM
SOLO EXHIBITION JAN BANNING
Galerie Opening of Solo Exhibition & Book Presentation – Jan Banning
Galerie Fontana Amsterdam: Saturday 30 May | 16:00 – 18:00
We are pleased to invite you to the opening of the solo exhibition by Dutch artist Jan Banning, alongside the presentation of his latest book, Bureaucratics Revisited.
Latest Series: Blood Bonds – Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda
This compelling new body of work explores a universal truth: every genocide eventually comes to an end. Survivors, the bereaved, perpetrators, and bystanders are left to rebuild their lives together. But how is reconciliation possible when distrust lingers and fear and hatred continue to smolder beneath the surface? The process of healing can take years sometimes generations.
In Blood Bonds, Jan Banning, in collaboration with writer Dick Wittenberg, portrays in both images and words a series of unlikely pairs: survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide alongside the perpetrators responsible for harming often killing their family members and loved ones. These are individuals who, against all odds, have chosen forgiveness and reconciliation an exceptional and deeply moving phenomenon.
Book Presentation: Bureaucratics Revisited
Bureaucratics is a long-term project comprising both a book and a traveling exhibition, which has been presented in over 45 museums, galleries, and institutions across eighteen countries on five continents. The exhibition, together with the newly revised and deluxe limited edition of the book (Bureaucratics Revisited, 2026), reflects the work of an anarchist’s heart, a historian’s mind, and an artist’s eye.
About the artist
Jan Banning is an internationally acclaimed Dutch photographer whose work explores the relationship between power, history, and the human condition. Combining the visual precision of portraiture with the depth of historical and social research, Banning creates photographic series that examine themes such as war, colonialism, bureaucracy, justice, and collective memory.
Originally trained as a social and economic historian at Radboud University Nijmegen, Banning approaches photography with a distinctive research-based methodology. His internationally recognised projects include Bureaucratics, Comfort Women, Law & Order, Red Utopia, and Blood Ties, a series on reconciliation and healing after the genocide in Rwanda. Across these bodies of work, Banning portrays his subjects with striking dignity and psychological intensity, revealing the complex realities that shape individual and collective lives.
Banning’s work has been exhibited widely in museums and institutions internationally and is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Rijksmuseum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the High Museum of Art, the Centraal Museum, the collection of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the AFAS Art Collection.
Saturday 30 May 2026 - Saturday 27 June 2026
For an overview of the available works click HERE
FONTANA AMSTERDAM
OPENING HOURS
Wednesday - Saturday
13.00 - 18.00
For an appointment outside opening hours:
+31 (0)20 22 3 88 33
FONTANA BRUSSELS
Awaken Love
Solo Exhibition Claudy Jongstra
Claudy Jongstra is renowned worldwide as a leading female artist for her textile artworks and architectural installations, which draw from her multifaceted approach, uniting artistry and ecological stewardship within a profound and enduring artist-activist vision.
In this solo exhibition, Awaken Love, Claudy Jongstra articulates a profound commitment to ecological consciousness. Each work invites viewers to reconnect with the natural world, awakening a renewed sense of care, while simultaneously functioning as an urgent call to protect and sustain our fragile ecosystem. The fortitude and resilience of the biotic communities from which these works emerge are materially and conceptually embedded within each tapestry.
Claudy operates from a self-sufficient studio and has a completely sustainable no-waste working process. In this way, she wants to contribute to enriching the soil and feeding the bees, thus helping to increase the biodiversity of the region. Considering the materiality of her practice, symmetry is drawn between the shell-like qualities of wool, ideally providing a soft, warm natural cocoon-like protection in which we can feel safe. Before the artist can start felting, all kinds of processes are involved to prepare the woollen fibres, such as carefully picking it clean and washing the raw wool and carding it to obtain smooth wads of silken soft fibres. In Claudy’s dedication to the practice and production of each work, the act of safeguarding is a narrative that has been strongly woven into each piece.
Claudy Jongstra produces artworks that are both formally accomplished as well as strongly committed to offering food for thought for a better future. Jongstra is an environmental activist. As Jongstra’s artistic practice expands, so too does the impact on her region. Collaborating with local farms, schools, universities and social initiatives, and drawing on a deep respect for the interwoven narratives of people, land, and tacit knowledge, Jongstra actively reimagines and revitalises the local landscape from monocultural production toward a more diverse, inclusive, and ecologically-just model.
With this solo exhibition of Claudy Jongstra, we hope to combine both the practical and fantastical in communicating our position in the current climate crisis. We hope to inspire viewers to be aware of their own accountability, as well as to consider that ideation is non-linear. Perhaps the voice of this presentation is a hopeful one, but that is for the viewer to decide.
CLAUDY JONGSTRA
Claudy Jongstra is known worldwide for her monumental textile artworks and architectural installations, with organic surfaces and vibrant colours that reflect Jongstra’s masterful innovations in the ancient techniques of wool felting and plant-based dyeing. Claudy Jongstra’s oeuvre, often installed in large public spaces, is also represented within many international museums and institutions as well as private and corporate collections.
For more than two decades, Claudy Jongstra has created textile artworks that reimagine systems of production, driven by a deep respect for the interwoven relations between natural materials, biodiverse ecologies, local communities, and intergenerational knowledge. Committed to the preservation and activation of natural and cultural heritage, Claudy Jongstra’s signature artworks and architectural installations are handcrafted with regenerative wool and biodynamic plant-based colours that revitalize the connection between visual beauty, material quality and ecological vitality.
In 2001, Jongstra established her studio in Friesland, a rural northern province of The Netherlands, where she also developed a biodynamic farm at De Kreake in Húns with partner Claudia Busson, cultivating dyers plants and collecting generic seed for future propagation. Jongstra sources wool, her primary artistic medium, from a local flock of rare, indigenous Drenthe Heath sheep (the oldest breed in Northern Europe). This radical soil-to- soil philosophy, no-waste approach and inclusive way of collaborating creates a vibrant, community-based and completely sustainable process culminating in Claudy Jongstra’s charismatic artworks.
As Jongstra’s artistic practice expands, so too does the impact on her region. Collaborating with local farms, schools, universities and social initiatives, and drawing on a deep respect for the interwoven narratives of people, land, and tacit knowledge, Jongstra actively reimagines and revitalizes the local landscape from monocultural production toward a more diverse, inclusive, and ecologically-just model
Wednesday 22 April - Saturday 27 June 2026
For an overview of the available works click HERE
FONTANA BRUSSELS
OPENING HOURS
Thursday - Saturday
11.00 - 18.00
For an appointment outside opening hours:
+31 (0)20 22 3 88 33
