My first solo exhibition · Opening 6 March 2027 · Mexico City
BIG NEWS. THE ARMOUR IS BEING FORGED.
This year, I become a knight.
Not a costume. A calling.
For fifteen years, I built other people’s worlds. Now I’m building my own: the room where a female knight prepares for what she’s here to do. Where she’s afraid, gathers herself and chooses what to carry. And where, afterwards, she lays the armour down.
Eight makers. Eight new works. One room.
Opening at KOIK Contemporary, Mexico City.
I’m raising €25.000 to build it right.
Not to ask permission. To build the room.
The armour, piece by piece.
For anyone who has known something before they could prove it. The calling you can’t fully explain. The one that won’t leave, however many times you reason it back into silence.
You don’t need a sword. Or a title. Or permission. If something in you recognises itself here, you’re already in the room.
My story
2025 was the hardest year of my life. My body collapsed. My spirit followed. I let go of Toffey, the studio I built from scratch. Of Human Rights Tattoo, a decade of my life. Of my income, my identity, and the person I thought I was supposed to be.
Then I found Jeanne d’Arc. Seventeen. No title. No army. She believed herself before anyone else did.
The exhibition
Not the battlefield. The room before it.
The Dressing Room of a Female Knight is a room you walk into. Armour, garments, photography, video, projection, banners, words, sound and ritual. Eight works, each made with a different maker. A place to meet the woman you might become if you took your own imagination seriously.
Why trust the hands building this?
I’ve done this before. Just never in my own name.
For ten years, I co-led Human Rights Tattoo: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, tattooed letter by letter onto 6,773 people worldwide. I held its artistic direction from Tilburg to museums in China, Mexico and France. It won the Red Dot Grand Prix.
For nearly a decade, I was artistic lead of Toffey, building worlds for Kunstbende, the Textielmuseum, Zuidelijk Toneel and Roadburn. I gave Doloris its name, and Toffey built the brand around it. It grew into an international art maze.
I know how to find an idea’s hidden wiring, gather the right makers and build something people walk into and feel.
A solo exhibition doesn’t mean a solitary act. I set the vision. Eight makers bring their own language. Together, we build the room.
You’re there while it happens. The research, the experiments, the rituals, the doubts, the decisions. Everything that usually happens behind closed doors, before the lights come on.
You enter the Knight Academy. Study the women who went into battle before you. Walk through the seven doorways. Decide what you’re willing to stand up for.
You fund the real thing. Production, materials and fair pay for eight makers. Not the cheaper version. The work as it deserves to be made.
You fund an exhibition. You inherit a quest.
I didn’t apply. I was asked.
On 12 March 2026, Lester Aguirre, founder and curator of KOIK Contemporary, invited me for a three-month residency and my first solo exhibition in Mexico City. It wasn’t an open call. It was a personal invitation, to an artist he saw before I dared to call myself one out loud.
KOIK isn’t a commercial gallery. It’s an independent, research-driven platform for experimental work, and you can only get in by invitation.
Someone saw the knight before I did. Now it’s my turn.
You don’t have to wait for the doors to open. You can help build the room now. And when they open, you’ll know part of that armour is yours.
I trust 2026. I trust timing. I trust my fellow knights.
Help me build the room. Then step into your own.
🖤 Niki