Warmoes Biennale: This is where to go

She has canals, she has high local-tourist tensions, and now she even has her own biennale: Amsterdam is breathing down Venice’s neck this week as the first edition of the Warmoes Biennale is open and running for two months in the city’s Red Light District.

Founded by Bonne Reijn & Justus Cohen Tervaert – co-founders of fashion brand BONNE, responsible for the Amsterdam Starterpack Uniform and artistic platform De Schans – the Warmoes Biennale set out to reframe the eponymous neighbourhood’s one-dimensional image from one of debauchery and excess to, what they consider to be, a more truthful portrait. Through the lens of the biennale, the people who live, laugh, love in, and cycle through, our capital’s raunchy medieval centre, are placed front and centre.

The Warmoes Biennale is a perfect exercise of ‘Yes, and.’ Yes, the area is renowned for the glowing red windows, sex shops, bars hosting British Stag do-ers, and cross-faded Italians taste-testing their very first, very potent space cake. And what if these places were allowed to act as loci for a form of cultural exchange that isn’t expected of them? From ceramics in a kebab shop to performances inviting psychosocial dialogue at the launderette. Marrying art with the power of place, you’ll find no white cubes here.

Agata Zwierynska, Drunken Ballet at Hot or Not Bar
Don’t let the haze of weed smoke and big screens on every wall playing match of the day convince you that you’re in the wrong place. Tucked at the far end of the bar at Hot or Not, performance artist and image maker Agata Zwierynska is exhibiting two works: Casita Maria, a miniature model of Casa Maria, the mixed queer bar that once stood where Hot or Not stands today, and Drunken Ballet, a video artwork whose title speaks to its observation of the bar’s many visitors, performing various creative choreographies of inebriation.

Buhlebezwe Siwani, incwadi kaJudith at Ons’ Lieve Heer Op Solder
On the busy Oudezijds Voorburgwal lies Ons’ Lieve Heer Op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic), a small church concealed within a canal house attic. The church-cum-museum was established in the 17th century, during a period when Catholics were forbidden from practising their faith publicly. Within its contemplative space, artist and sangoma (a traditional Zulu healer) Buhlebezwe Siwani’s photographic work explores how this history intersects with that of the surrounding neighbourhood, which for almost 800 years has also served as an address for brothels and sex workers, its character shaped by the maritime trade that once patronised it. For the Warmoes Biennale, the artist’s quiet portraits hold space for two practices that seem at odds: sex work and religious worship.

Marijke van Warmerdam, Voetbal (Football) at Lack of Guidance
Dutch artist and 1995 Venice Biennale veteran, Marijke van Warmerdam’s video work Voetbal (1995) can be found playing on a loop on a large black television placed on the shop floor at Lack of Guidance. Visible through the store’s large front window, you don’t even have to step inside to watch the video in its entirety (though we recommend you do). Borrowed from the Stedelijk Museum’s collection, the work offers a contrasting tension-calm experience you’re unlikely to encounter again while shopping. For Voetbal (Football), Van Warmerdam was tipped off on a young football prodigy from a Rotterdam football club who could balance a ball on his head for ten minutes. Watch him prove his skills for ten quiet minutes, the silence broken only by the occasional seagull scream or passing tram.

MUL-THEE-FUHNGK-SHUH-NL, Wie We Welzijn at Happy Inn Laundromat (4th of April)
Miss the good old days when people actually used to talk to each other? You’re in luck. Rotterdam-based collective MUL-THEE-FUHNGK-SHUH-NL is hosting a series of walk-in discussions around the state of wellbeing with customers and passers-by across numerous locations throughout the neighbourhood: tattoo studios, post offices, and laundrettes.

On the 4th of April, the collective will enter into dialogue with those hoping to wash their clothes at the Happy Inn Laundromat. The sub-topic du jour: “The Search”. Not limited to the three performances, MUL-THEE-FUHNGK-SHUH-NL’s psychogeographical findings from the sessions will be published in three issues distributed across participating spaces towards the end of the Warmoes Biennale.

Arash Fakhim, Juicy Kebab – a space for gathering part two (2026) at Juicy Kebab
One kebab, no onion, yes to all sauces – and a ceramic Ayran, please. Multidisciplinary artist Arash Fakhim collaborated with Juicy Kebab to create a context-specific body of work, which remodels the familiar aesthetic of the trusted kebab joint in ceramic: The red plastic stool, handmade with a faded claret glaze, a cling film-wrapped inedible skewer of meat waits on the counter. In a city reshaped by rapid gentrification, the small kebab shop functions as a meeting point where a diverse clientele eat and order shoulder to shoulder and where stories of diaspora are heard free from institutional box-ticking. During the biennale, the shop hosts informal gatherings focusing on dialogue, food, and shared time, so keep an eye out on Instagram for the dates they take place.

EMIRHAKIN, The Place Where The Light Enters You at RoB
You can’t spell Red Light District without spelling Fetish. RoB, established in 1976 by Rob Meijer, has existed as a trailblazing specialist in leather fetish craftsmanship. For the occasion, EMIRHAKIN – whose practice embraces text, video, installation, and performance – approaches the store as an archive of contemporary desire. Here, thick with the musky scent of high-quality leather, fantasies of control and submission, care and (dis)comfort, are displayed along the walls. At the back of the shop, EMIRHAKIN’s work – a leather and chain sex swing, pulled taut – is emblazoned with a poetic text that speaks to both the erotic and the devotional.

Tip: While RoB certainly acts as a catalogue of kinky things been and gone, there is no time like the present to stock up on some amazing leather goods. The two-stripe leather tracksuit pants are firmly on our wishlist.