FROM 18 OCT 2025 –15 FEB 2026 | What does freedom mean in a city like Rotterdam, eighty years after liberation? The new exhibition Drawn: Rotterdam! My City, Our Freedom brings together city artists Amber Rahantoknam, Minne Ponsen, and Christine Saalfeld, each offering a personal interpretation of what freedom looks and feels like in modern Rotterdam.
Image credit: Christine Saalfeld
Commissioned by Rotterdam City Archives and CBK Rotterdam, the artists spent this past summer exploring the city to capture its many perspectives on liberty. Their works will be on view at Kunsthal Rotterdam from 18 October 2025 to 15 February 2026.
A living portrait of freedom
Freedom can mean something different to everyone — from the right to speak and move freely to the ability to feel safe in one’s own city. The exhibition marks eighty years since the liberation of the Netherlands and other European countries after the Second World War. In 2025, those hard-won rights are still being debated and defended daily. Through illustration, poetry, and animation, these three artists examine how freedom is lived, challenged, and redefined in a city shaped by migration, resilience, and constant change.
Amber Rahantoknam (AMBIGOU)
Amber Rahantoknam (1996) — known artistically as AMBIGOU — merges illustration, poetry, and performance in her work. Inspired by comic strips, tattoos and surrealism, she uses colourful, unconventional characters to explore inclusion and intergenerational trauma. For this project, AMBIGOU asked: What makes us free? What does freedom look like? How can it be protected?
To answer these questions, she visited diverse Rotterdam communities — from De Poetsclub at Tiki’s Cocktail Bar to the Genderbending Cruise Party at WORM — and wove their stories together with her own experiences into a poetic, five-part comic strip.
Minne Ponsen
Minne Ponsen (1999) takes personal experiences of feeling unsafe in public space as the foundation for her series Bring No Clothes. In four intricate drawings, she combines fragmented human forms with abstract maps of Rotterdam, exploring how the body and the city interact. By transforming fear into imagination, Ponsen reclaims both physical and emotional space — creating a vision of a city where body and environment exist in harmony.
Christine Saalfeld
Christine Saalfeld (1968) presents a collection of 98 gouache and coloured-pencil drawings, accompanied by a short animation. Her vivid, associative works explore how freedom reveals itself in daily life — during neighbourhood meetings, in allotment gardens, or through spontaneous street conversations. Each moment reminds viewers that freedom can appear in the most ordinary encounters.
A Rotterdam tradition revived
Since before the bombing of 14 May 1940, artists have documented the city’s changing face. After the war, the Rotterdam City Archives continued this tradition annually until the late 1980s. In 2018, CBK Rotterdam and the City Archives revived the initiative, once again commissioning city artists to contribute to the official Rotterdam Collection.
This year’s artists were selected by a jury comprising Pris Roos, Cindy Stegeman, Ove Lucas (CBK Rotterdam), Erika Hokke, Wanda Waanders (Rotterdam City Archives), and David Snels (Kunsthal Rotterdam curator). After the exhibition, all works will become part of the permanent city collection.
Directions
Venue: Kunsthal Rotterdam, Museumpark, Westzeedijk 341, Rotterdam
Dates: 18 October 2025 – 15 February 2026
Tickets & info: kunsthal.nl
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