New Languages, New Ideas: The New Art Section 2025

The New Art Section is arguably one of the most exciting components of Art Rotterdam. This year, curator Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu has brought together a surprising mix of international galleries, each presenting a solo booth by artists proposing new formal and material languages. The section welcomes galleries and artists of all ages, making it a unique space for visitors to discover various paths artists choose to challenge the status quo.

Curator Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu brings her extensive international experience and sharp vision to this dynamic section. With an impressive background in both biennials and exhibitions, and a profound commitment to intersectional and feminist perspectives, Durmuşoğlu focuses on creating an environment where diverse artistic voices and innovative ideas converge. Under her guidance, the New Art Section not only serves as a refreshing constellation of artists but also poses critical questions about what 'new' truly means in a time of significant social and cultural transformation. In an interview, Durmuşoğlu shares her vision, curatorial approach, and the exciting collaborations featured in this year's New Art Section.

Can you describe your vision for the New Art Section? How have your experiences across different contexts — ranging from biennials to monographic exhibitions — and your engagement with topics such as intersectional futures and togetherness (from feminist queer perspectives) shaped your approach to curating the New Art Section? What do you hope audiences take away from experiencing your approach?
The world has been going through a major and painful wave of metamorphosis since 2020. Some call it the time of monsters, after Gramsci and Baumann, some think liberalism is already dead and nobody claims its corpse. Questions need to be definitely reformulated, solutions need to be collectively shaped. Freddie Mercury already asked back in 1991: ‘Does anybody know what we are living for?’ 

As a curator who has been working on collective memory of struggles, intersectional futures and togetherness, I am personally curious about what stays behind and what flourishes new after this giant tide subsides. So the New Art Section takes a questioning spirit; what is that new we have kept running after? What versatile languages can be built inside that questioning spirit?

My desire for the audiences of is that they leave with curiosity, imagination and hope through the constellation of diverse artistic voices and positions we present in the section. There are many worlds in the world that co-habit alongside each other and art world is the same. Creating meaningful environments of relation and communication, rather than division and separation, is crucial in all settings of artistic presentation, including the market. 

What excites you most about this edition of the New Art Section? Could you highlight any artists that particularly resonated with you during this year’s selection process?
First of all, I am excited to bring my fair experience from working with ARCO Madrid to Art Rotterdam: It is an organisation that means a lot for local and regional actors and that has a promising potential of growth beyond the region. New Art Section serves as a vital stepping stone environment for upcoming galleries, providing them with a platform where they get to fine tune their voices alongside marking the global young positions connected to the Dutch art scene. 

Mercedes Azpilicueta, who has chosen Amsterdam as her second home after Buenos Aires, will be showing her work at Art Rotterdam for the first time. [Her work was recently on view at the Stedelijk Museum, ed.]. Thanks to the gallery Prats Nogueras Blanchard, we will present her mind bending humorous work that challenges everyday understanding of corporealities. On the other side, Brussels-based artist Yesim Akdeniz, who showed her paintings in Art Rotterdam fifteen years ago, comes back with exquisite installation work departing from eccentricities of modernist logic. 

A long time friend and collaborator Ivan Gallery from Bucharest comes with the strong and delicate painting work Shahin Sharafaldin for the first time, who currently lives in London. I am also very happy to be able to present the fresh and uncompromising work of Mane Pacheco with Balcony Gallery from Lisbon, an artist that I have been following for a while. Thanks to KIN, one of the new voices of Brussels, it was exciting to discover the work of Tanae Hynes, questioning the illusions of liberal logic, which is echoed by Buenos Aires-based artist Nina Kovensky, presented by Quimera. 

You have been working in different institutional settings throughout your internationally driven practice alongside the fair structures. How do you see the interplay between the commercial art world and experimental and critical art practices? 
Always curious about infrastructure as material and notion, I believe it is important to acknowledge the dynamics of art world’s different components in order to propose better working solutions. The balance among galleries, project spaces, initiatives, art centres, and museums in a particular context shows a healthy and sensitively woven artistic structure. Therefore, in a world that pushes us to respond only in like and dislike, love and hate, I propose to search after meaningful pluralities and a fair share of resources.

What are you currently reading and watching?
I’m currently reading the English translation of Aimé Césaire’s long poem ‘Return To My Native Land’ (1956), whose thinking has kept on inspiring me, about the measure of the world, radical hope and the irony of projected equality for humanity. ‘The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages’ (2013) by François-Xavier Fauvelle is so refreshing to read, Fauvelle treats the unspoken histories of civilisation in such a careful and intelligent way. I am also accompanied by the new jewel biography of Audre Lorde penned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, ‘Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde’. I have watched the works of Pinar Ögrenci  and Claudia Pages Rabal for the new texts I am preparing and Kamal Aljafari’s precise counter narrative take ‘A Fidai Film’ (2024). 

About
Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu is a curator, writer and educator with a focus on constructive critiques of civilization, the sustainability of intersectional futures, and practices of togetherness from feminist queer perspectives. She recently curated the monographic exhibitions 'The Story Behind Each Word Must Be Told' by Nil Yalter (Ab Anbar, London), ‘Portrait of a Movement’ by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz (CA2M, Madrid and Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm), and ‘Burn&Gloom, Glow&Moon: Thousand Years of Troubled Genders’ by Katrina Daschner (Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna). She also co-curated two editions of the Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo and in the past curated programmes for the Istanbul Biennale, dOCUMENTA (13) and steirischer herbst. Durmuşoğlu co-leads the Art in Discourse programme at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig and previously taught as a guest professor at the Graduate School of the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.       

New Art Section 2025
The galleries participating in the New Art Section in 2025 are: Balcony Gallery (Portugal), Brinkman & Bergsma Contemporary Art (The Netherlands), BUYSSE GALLERY (Belgium), Contemporary Cluster (Italy), Double V Gallery (France), Erika Deák Gallery (Hungary), Galerie Fleur & Wouter (The Netherlands), Galerist (Turkiye), Gallery Van Fanny Freytag (The Netherlands), Ivan (Romania), JOEY RAMONE (The Netherlands), Kin Gallery BV (Belgium), Mini Galerie (The Netherlands), Pizza Gallery (Belgium), Prats Nogueras Blanchard (Spain), Quimera (Argentinia), SANATORIUM (Turkiye), TATJANA PIETERS GALLERY (Belgium), Wouters Gallery (Belgium) and Zyrland Zoiropa (Germany).

Written by Flor Linckens