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international art talent festival

felix meritis, november 26th,

19:30-23:00

afterparty 23:00-01:00 

Keizersgracht 324, 1016 EZ Amsterdam


presented by
Amsterdam Fund for the Arts
and Bureau Broedplaatsen


Felix Meritis opens its doors for an evening of interdisciplinary, visual and performing art. Fifteen Amsterdam based artists come together for the 2026 International Art Talent Festival, presenting their new work and ongoing research.

The artists form the 2026 cohort of the 3Package Deal, a talent development programme by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) and Bureau Broedplaatsen of the City of Amsterdam, in collaboration with 15 Coalitions of renowned cultural organizations in Amsterdam. Join us at Felix Meritis on 26 November for an evening marking the culmination of a year of artistic research, experimentation and exchange.

The 13th International Art Talent Festival 2026 is curated by Helena Julian and produced by Rafael Kozdron.

Admission free tickets

Bio Art and Design: Luca Gerry Conte | Cabaret: Martijn van Arkel | Dance: Elisa Zuppini | Engaged Art: Tumelo Mtimkhulu | Fashion: Noukhey Forster | Film: Mei Liu | Interhistoricity: Munganyende | Music: Dimitra Sofroniou | Publishing/Performance: Noor de Vries | Self-taught: Priscilla Pancras| Social Design: Savva Dudin | Theatre: Femi van Elshuis | Urban Realm: juan felipe amaya gonzález (JFAG) | Visual Art I: Sterre Pomper | Visual Art II: Reyhan Lál

Luca Gerry Conte

Bio Art and Design

Luca Gerry Conte is an artist, gastronome and storyteller. His practice explores how artworks and situations evolve across space and time, creating multisensory experiences that encourage an ecological awareness of the environments we inhabit. Working with food, natural materials and interactive elements, he explores the potential for social and poetic transformation. His research into material and gastronomic metamorphosis draws attention to the extraordinary within the ordinary, inviting audiences to engage with familiar environments in unexpected ways. These encounters often require a small effort or moment of friction, opening up possibilities for intimate narratives and connections. Underlying his practice is an alchemic process. A quiet, ongoing research into transformation, not only of matter, but also of meaning and personal experience.

What Happened to the World? What Happened to That Child? is an installation that explores the relationship between ecological transformation, everyday rituals and play. Building on his research into food and its potential beyond consumption, Conte works with organic materials and experimental creations that challenge conventional ways of interacting with our surroundings. The installation at Felix Meritis creates a space for both activity and rest, where domestic gestures meet playful experimentation with living materials. Rather than treating these materials as fixed objects, Conte considers their capacity to change, decay, and become part of ongoing cycles of transformation. Through this approach, the work reflects on what nourishes a body, guided by personal experience, curiosity and imagination. During the whole event, the space will be open to anyone to rest and play, with the aid of Pietro Lugaro and Enrica Arbia, who will facilitate the creation of a playful soundscape.

Martijn van Arkel

Cabaret

Martijn van Arkel is a writer and performer, working in theatre and poetry. His texts move between the everyday and the existential, considering how small gestures and ordinary experiences can carry larger meanings. Drawing on childhood memories, bodily experiences and family narratives, he writes about how people relate to one another and questions whether faith and religion are enough to provide a sense of connection. He graduated from Writing for Performance at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Together with his brother Jeroen van Arkel, he developed a performance titled Onze Vader, about their father, a reverend, with which they reached the finals of the Amsterdam Kleinkunst Festival.

For his presentation at Felix Meritis, he will perform alongside his brother, drawing on their ongoing collaboration for the new theatre production Zeg Maar U. Inspired by the biblical story of Cain and Abel, the two brothers explore their differences, and their search for something worth believing in. Moving between poetry, spoken text and absurd observations, the performance considers brotherhood, masculinity and the ways family relationships shape our understanding of ourselves and one another.

Please note: Dutch spoken, no English subtitles

Credits
Director: Pepijn Cladder, Performers: Jeroen and Martijn van Arkel, Writers: Jeroen and Martijn van Arkel, Costume Design: Gina van Os

Elisa Zuppini

Dance

Elisa Zuppini is an Italian-born choreographer based in Amsterdam. She graduated from the School for New Dance Development (SNDO). Since 2016, she has been developing De.sy.re., a pioneering movement system that forms the basis of her artistic language. She is a member of Jakoozi, a collective of Amsterdam-based choreographers. She recently premiered Disambiguation, a large ensemble work featuring 15 performers. The work deepens her research into collective perception, libidinal economies, and altered states of attention shaped by contemporary nocturnal culture, exploring how ambiguity and desire can function as dynamic forces in reorganizing collective experience.

Himalaya (2019–ongoing) is a solo performance that brings together sculpture, metaphysical fiction and electronic music. The work considers different perceptions of time and the ways in which the body relates to its surroundings. Through movement, Zuppini explores the relationship between the body and different systems of perception of time and space. She contrasts the slow processes of geological erosion, the accelerating imagery of digital environments and the repetitive movements of machines. These different rhythms and forces meet in the body, creating moments of tension and transformation. Since its first presentation in 2019, Himalaya has continued to evolve alongside Zuppini's artistic practice and her ongoing research into movement, technology and contemporary society. The latest version, developed in 2026, incorporates new musical material from Hesaitix's album Noctian Airgap. His electronic compositions move between organic and synthetic sounds, contributing to the work's shifting sense of time.

Credits
Concept and choreography: Elisa Zuppini
Performer: Federica Dalla Pozza
Original music: Hesaitix fka M.E.S.H. (James Whipple)
Dramaturgy: Bruno Listopad
Light design: Pablo Fontdevila
Technique: Martin Kaffarnik

Co-produced and supported by: Amsterdam Fonds for the Arts, ICK Dans Amsterdam, Choreographic Center Heidelberg, Danza Urbana, Armunia Teatri, RAM; Residenze Artistiche Marchigiane (promoted by MiC and Regione Marche), Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Culture Moves Europe

Tumelo Mtimkhulu

Engaged Art

Tumelo Mtimkhulu is an artist from South Africa, working between Johannesburg and Amsterdam. His practice questions the language and architectures through which established social realities are constructed and maintained. He approaches these realities, and the ways they shape experiences of upbringing, labour, loss, geopolitics, imagination, love and language, with suspicion. Through poetry and material abstraction, Mtimkhulu investigates how particular ways of living and understanding the world come to be presented as natural and inevitable, despite often reflecting the imagination of a few. His practice encompasses an expanding range of materials and forms, including visual and written text, plaster, cement, concrete, everyday objects, sound and video.

Commonplace takes vibracrete walls as a starting point for considering how social realities come to be perceived as fixed and unchangeable. Drawing on the visual language of privacy, domestic interiors and architectural divisions, the installation brings together material abstractions, curtains and structures that are classically used to establish the binary of public and/or private space. Referencing the use of curtains to divide open-plan homes in working-class South African households, the work considers how physical structures shape social relations and everyday life. At the same time, it questions how imagination, desire and ordinary acts of living can offer forms of resistance, and how these possibilities may themselves become absorbed into established social realities.