Kseniia and Suzanna de Ridder exhibit What Persists at INTRO

FROM 16 AUG–11 SEP '26 | Rotterdam-based artists Kseniia and Suzanna de Ridder bring their work together in What Persists, a duo exhibition about resilience, survival and the forms of life that continue under pressure. The exhibition runs from 16 August to 11 September at INTRO, the small gallery inside the entrance of De Hillevliet in Rotterdam-Zuid.

Flowers that keep blooming and weeds that push through the cracks of the city form the two sides of the exhibition. Through large paintings, watercolours and handwritten texts, the artists look at persistence as something quiet and everyday rather than heroic or dramatic.

Two views of resilience

The shared theme emerges through different artistic approaches. Kseniia paints cultivated flowers whose beauty is shaped by difficult conditions, while De Ridder turns her attention to plants commonly dismissed as unwanted, invasive or out of place.

Placed together, the works ask what decides whether something is considered valuable, troublesome or worth protecting. A flower carefully tended in a garden and a weed growing beside the pavement may seem like opposites, but both survive by adapting to the conditions around them.

Flowers shaped by pressure

Kseniia presents work from her ongoing Flowers of Will series, including three new paintings that will be shown publicly for the first time during the opening on Friday 21 August. Her large-scale acrylic works use flowers to explore resilience, identity, belonging and personal transformation. 

The paintings focus on blooms that continue to grow despite pressure, damage or difficult surroundings. Their softness is never presented as weakness. Instead, the flowers become a way of looking at strength that does not need to become hard in order to endure.

Giving city weeds a voice

Suzanna de Ridder, working as Studio Space Cadet, contributes watercolours and handwritten text pieces imagining what urban weeds might say if they could speak. These are plants pushed aside as invasive or undesirable, yet they continue to appear between paving stones, beside walls and across forgotten pieces of land.

De Ridder combines visual art and writing in work that moves between everyday life and the surreal. Her practice explores belonging, nostalgia, hope and our place in the wider world, often leaving questions deliberately unresolved.

Art inside De Hillevliet

INTRO is the mini-gallery at the entrance of De Hillevliet, a creative and community-focused building on Hillevliet in Rotterdam-Zuid. The compact gallery works with Art is Home to present exhibitions, experiments and projects by emerging local artists. 

The setting suits an exhibition concerned with what grows and survives outside conventional spaces. Rather than placing the works inside a large formal museum, What Persists meets you as you enter a building used by makers, social organisations and creative initiatives from the surrounding neighbourhood.

Visit What Persists

What Persists can be seen from Sunday 16 August until Friday 11 September 2026. The free opening event takes place on Friday 21 August at 19:00, when Kseniia will also reveal the three newest works from Flowers of Will.

Entry to the exhibition is free. More information about Kseniia and her work can be found at https://simplykseniia.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/kseniia.here. More about Suzanna de Ridder’s practice is available through https://www.studiospacecadet.com/.

How to get there

INTRO is located inside the entrance of De Hillevliet at Hillevliet 90 in Rotterdam-Zuid. The venue is close to Beijerlandselaan and within walking distance of tram stops along Randweg and Hillevliet.