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On view: 13 June to 6 September 2026
Curator: Roxy Jongewaard
In 2023 and 2024, Suliman did a residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Since then, Bonnefanten has been following the artist carefully. This contact resulted in the creation of The Studio #11: Malina Suliman.
Impressive
Suliman’s art is created from a personal urge: it is her survival technique. Her work is topical and urgent, and takes various forms. Suliman sees her work as an instrument of social and political criticism. She poses questions about our everyday reality and struggle for survival, whilst her work also brings to light ideas about potentially better worlds.
The tremendous visual appeal of Suliman’s art is further reinforced by the performances she links to it. The artist has exhibited and given performances in the Netherlands and abroad. She has held presentations at the Institut Français (Kabul), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Wilde Weten (Rotterdam), United Nations (Brussels) and National Gallery (Islamabad), among others. In 2022, she gave a solo exhibition in Museo Casa Rusca (Locarno).
Afghanistan
Early on in her life, Suliman was confronted with war and oppression in Afghanistan. As a young woman, she was forbidden to work and study, or even go outdoors unaccompanied. As an artist, she started out by creating figurative, feminist work, as a cry for freedom. As Suliman publicly opposed the regime, she found herself forced to flee Afghanistan in 2013. In the Netherlands, she underwent the tough process of naturalisation.
Artist in exile
Since her exile, she has been interested in concepts like conflict, borders and forced migration in a globalised world. She explores and expresses feelings like alienation, isolation, lack of understanding, homesickness and memories. Suliman also sheds light on the mechanisms behind social exclusion and inequality, as well as various hierarchies relating to gender, class, ethnicity and citizenship.
During her naturalisation process, she made great strides in her career. In 2016, she gained her Master’s degree at the ArtEZ Dutch Art Institute. After that, she won the prestigious Artist Protection Fund Fellowship in 2017 and collaborated with the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. In 2025, she gained her Master’s degree in choreography at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Walking in the Sea
One eye-catcher in the presentation is Walking in the Sea: a huge map of the world made of earth and pigments. The work, which she developed at the Jan van Eyck Academy in 2023, is based on her personal experiences. In it, she explores the complex gap between the way borders are depicted and the way she experiences them as an Afghan-Dutch artist.
It’s time for the Zhar Palawe
This embroidered map of the world is a follow-up to Walking in the Sea and also enters into dialogue with the Mappe series by the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti (1940 – 1994). Suliman made her tapestry together with seven embroiderers working in different regions of Afghanistan, thus showing an important tradition in the culture of her homeland and entering into dialogue – through the embroidery process – with Afghan women.
Stergi pa Laara (My eyes are waiting for you on your way)
This extremely personal work shows the report of Suliman’s screening by the Dutch Immigration Service.
Malina Suliman in the museum
Until the opening on Saturday 13 June, Malina Suliman will be working in the museum on Walking in the Sea. This process can be followed live in the museum every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, from 13.00 to 17.00. On 6 September, the artist will give a spectacular closing performance, in which visitors can walk over Walking in the Sea.