From 27 – 29 March 2026, the Mondriaan Fund is organising a new edition of Prospects during Art Rotterdam. The exhibition takes place at the new location Rotterdam Ahoy and shows the work of 92 starting artists. All artists received a financial contribution in 2024 within the Artist Start grant of the Mondriaan Fund to kickstart their career. The 14th edition of Prospects is being curated by Johan Gustavsson and Daphne Verberg.
The Mondriaan Fund organises the ‘Prospects’ exhibition each year to give the visibility of starting artists an extra boost. The proximity of Art Rotterdam gives art professionals and collectors, but also a broad group of interested parties, the opportunity to become acquainted with the work of these promising artists.
The exhibition is also an excellent opportunity to show what has been achieved in part thanks to a contribution from the Mondriaan Fund. An Artist Start contribution is intended for starting artists who have been working professionally for a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 4 years. The contribution can be used for anything related to the development of work and art practice, such as research, material, equipment and projects at home or abroad.
The exhibition is curated by Johan Gustavsson in collaboration with curator Daphne Verberg. Gustavsson is co-director of 1646 and a lecturer at the KABK. Verberg is a freelance curator and project manager. She is currently working on a series of solo presentations at the Palace of Justice in The Hague and for the past two years, she has been co-director of the resort.
Gustavsson and Verberg on the exhibition:
“Prospects 2026 highlights a new wave of artists who address today’s changing world with imagination, rigour, and great energy. This 14th edition of Prospects, participants take on urgent questions from reshaping collective memory to examining new relationships between technology, ecology and the human body. Their works show that experimentation and care can go hand in hand, offering glimpses of alternative futures that are both challenging and full of possibilities. We are honoured to introduce this diverse group of talents, whose practices reflect the richness and momentum of contemporary art in the Netherlands.”
Pietà
The campaign image for this edition is the work Pietà (2025) by Prospects participant Pippilotta Yerna. For Yerna, family forms the starting point of all her work: each project emerges from a new question or observation within this theme. The photographic triptych she presents at Prospects features her great-aunt as its central figure, a woman who was special and progressive to Yerna and who lived to the age of 101. The triptych functions as a contemporary canonization and is an ode to Yerna’s great-aunt as well as to life itself.
NN Award
For the tenth time, during the upcoming edition of Art Rotterdam, the prestigious NN Art Award will be presented. Prospects artist Kyra Nijskens has been nominated. The winner of the NN Art Award will be announced in Kunsthal Rotterdam on Friday, March 27.