13th ABN AMRO Art Award at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
- Art & heritage
Stefan Wilten
Senior PR Specialist
From 7 March 2026, Ivna Esajas will present Wayward Lines. Consent Not to Be a Single Being at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The exhibition is part of the 13th ABN AMRO Art Award, which she won last year. Esajas invited artists Siomara Ratna van Bochove, Sondi and Jaasir Linger, as well as DJ LOVESUPREME, to contribute to the exhibition.
Interaction and equality
Ivna Esajas’ work moves at the intersection of drawing and painting. Her figures flow into each other and form temporary connections that are both fragile and resilient. In a poetic and playful way, she raises questions about our interconnectedness and our relationship to history. This commitment to collectivity is at the heart of this project. From her practice – where perspectives continuously intertwine — the exhibition was developed as a call-and-response, a concept based on interaction, to which different makers contribute from their respective practices.
The exhibition brings together works that draw on family histories, personal experiences and cultural traditions. The presentation is conceptualised as the A and B sides of a record, with Consent Not to Be a Single Being and Wayward Lines as two complementary parts, in an effort to explore shared authorship and ownership. This creates space for pluriversal perspectives on how Blackness is experienced – rooted in everyday life and intergenerational knowledge, continuously reshaped by the contexts in which it exists. The exhibition is curated by Amal Alhaag.
Danila Cahen, curator of the ABN AMRO Collection: “Last year, Ivna Esajas was awarded the ABN AMRO Art Award. We appreciate Esajas’ commitment to the plurality of voices in the arts. How the platform she received has been broadened in pursuit of collaboration, giving the exhibition a pronounced collective character. It is a unique interpretation of the award.”
Performance
At the opening of Wayward Lines writer, poet and spoken word artist Babs Gons will perform, and an ongoing performance of theatre DEGASTEN in collaboration with DJ LOVESUPREME will take place.
The publication
The multiplicity of voices that shapes the exhibition also extends into the publication Wayward Lines, compiled by Amal Alhaag in collaboration with Ivna Esajas. The publication was designed by Irma Boom Office as part of the award. Rather than functioning as a traditional illustrative catalogue, the book takes on the form of a reader, a document in which Babs Gons, Momtaza Mehri, Aude Mgba, Mame-Fatou Niang and others offer associative and poetic reflections on themes such as unfinishedness, Black positionality, authorship and gender. The publication will be presented on 6 March.
Jury report on Ivna Esajas
“The jury sees Esajas as a driven artist who conscientiously follows her own path. Working at the intersection of drawing and painting, she creates an intriguing universe in which everything seems to flow into each other while carrying equal weight, and in which nothing seems to be able to exist without each other. Esajas draws inspiration from myths and personal stories, Black feminist traditions, science fiction, literature, and everyday life. From this rich array of sources, she builds a poetic universe that is constantly in motion but always in balance." The full jury report on Ivna Esajas can be found (in Dutch).
About the ABN AMRO Art Award
ABN AMRO aims to provide artists support to boost their development, offering them a platform to reach as wide an audience as possible. The ABN AMRO Art Award focuses on supporting female talent in the Netherlands. This signifies the bank’s and the Stedelijk Museum’s shared mission of promoting equality and inclusion in the art sector. The prize includes a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, a publication, and a monetary award. Furthermore, work by the laureate is acquired for the ABN AMRO Art Collection. Coinciding with the exhibition at the Stedelijk, work by Esajas can also be seen in the ABN AMRO Art Space in the exhibition Sharp Tongues; see (in Dutch.)
Press preview
The press preview will take place on Friday 6 March 2026 at 1.00 pm. Members of the press who would like to attend can register via . The press preview is exclusively for media, and participants’ accreditation must be confirmed prior to the event.
Photo: Ivna Esajas, Makuba, 2025