Sonic Acts Biennial 2026: Melted for Love
The exhibition Melted for Love, taking place across W139, Arti et Amicitiae, and Rozenstraat, as part of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2026, explores how the notion of ‘home’ is being renegotiated by climate crisis, colonial histories, and forced displacement. The exhibition brings together installations, films, sound works, and performances that reflect on how land, bodies, and ecosystems are shaped and altered by systems of exploitation. By listening to the echoes left behind, it highlights gestures of love and connection with land and community as forms of resistance and repair.
W139
At W139, the exhibition focuses on how ecosystems absorb the pressures of militarisation, colonial occupation, and environmental disruption. The artworks follow different types of signals – such as sound waves, vibrations, radio transmissions, and ecological changes – as they move across landscapes, through subsurface networks, and throughout the more-than-human world.
Lower Levant Company – the duo of sound artist Emiddio Vasquez and researcher-curator Peter Eramian – together with Polish artist Olga Micińska, combine bat calls, radio broadcasts, and encrypted messages to reflect on the ecological catastrophies caused by colonial warfare in the Eastern Mediterranean. Diana Policarpo, a Portuguese artist and composer, and architect-researcher Bernardo Gaeiras speculate on the future regenerative uses of the former Bugio Lighthouse through radiophonic transmissions. Adelita Husni-Bey restages Italian fascist archives, exposing damaged infrastructures and extractivist legacies in Libya.
German visual artist Alina Schmuch – participating in ALTERLIFE, Sonic Acts’ major international research and residency programme with Rupert in Vilnius – studies engineered water systems affected by drought and rising sea levels, revealing how bodies are gradually excised from ‘natureculture’. Maeve Brennan, a London-based filmmaker, explores the depths of a salt mine to question the violent writing and preservation of Western imperial power.
Sonic Acts Biennial 2026: Melted for Love
The Sonic Acts Biennial 2026 takes place from 5 February to 29 March 2026 in Amsterdam, with 80 events across 20 venues, featuring work by 200+ artists. This large-scale arts manifestation includes concerts, listening sessions, a symposium, film screenings, exhibitions, masterclasses, workshops, and site-specific projects. At its centre is the Biennial’s main exhibition Melted for Love, spanning W139, Arti et Amicitiae, and Rozenstraat, which will be open during the entire Biennial period, from Wednesday to Sunday, 12:00–20:00, and additionally, Monday, 2 March, from 12:00 to 17:00.
Visitors can purchase tickets for each exhibition location, or choose a combined ticket at a discounted price. The tickets are not dated, and visitors can use them during the general visiting hours, excluding the performance events.
More information: 2026.sonicacts.com
