The exhibition

Eight new works. One room.

Not a costume. A world on its own.

On 6 March 2027, The Dressing Room of a Female Knight opens at KOIK Contemporary in Mexico City.

The Dressing Room is a spatial exhibition. A room you enter. A universe of armour, garments, photography, video, projections, banners, words, sound and ritual. A place to encounter the woman you might become if you took your own imagination seriously.

The invitation came from Lester Aguirre, founder and curator of KOIK Contemporary, one of the most brilliant contemporary art spaces in CDMX.

Not an open call. Not an application. A personal invitation to an artist he’d been watching before I called myself one out loud.

I said yes. Three months of residency. One solo exhibition.
My coming out. As an artist. As a knight.

What happens when an advertiser reinvents herself as an artist?

For fifteen years, I built worlds for others. Brands. Campaigns. Other people’s missions. Behind a client, I never had to stand in front. This time, there’s no one to hide behind.

So I’m building a room I’ve never seen, but have imagined for years. The space behind the stage. Where the star gets ready. Where the knight prepares for battle. No masks. The place where a calling takes shape. Grows firm. Becomes real.

A lifetime of obsessions, finally in one room. Epic women. The catwalk. The battlefield. Giants. Billboards. Bathing. Rituals. Cheerleaders. Devotion.

The eight works

A solo exhibition doesn’t mean a solitary act. I set the vision. I bring the right makers together. Each brings a language of their own. Together, we build the room. I am creating eight works.

• 01. The Knights, Reimagined
  The four knights of the tarot, reimagined as women. Real women. Epic presence. Photography with visual storyteller Armando Juarez.
• 02. The Mirror
  Reflection, light and moving image. VJ work with visual artist and architect Erik López. The familiar becomes less certain.
• 03. Apotheosis
  A video about becoming. The fun and struggle of finding your sword and armour.
• 04. The Wall of Words
  Posters, floor text, word art. With graphic designer Olivier van Zummeren and poet Loes van Rooij. Sometimes words don’t explain a feeling. They unlock it.
• 05. The Banner
  Jeanne d’Arc carried her banner closer than her sword. A contemporary translation, also brought onto five billboards across Mexico City, made possible by Publimex.
• 06. The Altar
  Armour. Sword. Garments. Where high fashion meets power. Where wigs become an altar.
• 07. The Ritual
  A bath. An accolade. A sword laid on the shoulder, marking the passage into a new identity.
• 08. The Knights Cheer
  A battle cry. A toast. A sermon. Preach. Words by my sister, poet Loes van Rooij.

A dressing room is a strange and wonderful place. Intimate. Private. Sometimes ridiculous. A place for wigs, weapons, nerves, lipstick, prayer and last-minute existential crises. Where you take everything off before deciding what to put on.

Where you prepare to be seen. And are allowed, for a moment, not to be.

Sacred. Kitsch. Vulnerable and intimidating.

Picture a woman stepping out of a classical painting, stealing a rock star’s wardrobe, challenging the king, and looking spectacular while doing it.

Here, femininity doesn’t have to be pretty, agreeable or easy to understand. Power can be extravagant. Vulnerability can have a magnificent wardrobe.

A lifetime of obsessions, finally at the same table. Epic women. Catwalks. Battlefields. Giants. Rock stars. Cheerleaders. Altars. Bathing. Devotion. And the delicious theatre of being alive.

I want to build a room that gives form to the moment before becoming. The charged, uncertain, gloriously private space between who you have been and who you might dare to be.

You choose the dress. You fasten the armour. You pick up the sword.

A room that asks a question I have been asking myself for years: What would you become if you gave yourself permission to go all the way?

Why €25.000?

Because ambition deserves more than a compromised version of itself.

Your contribution funds production, materials and fair pay for eight makers. Not shrinking the idea until it’s affordable. Not asking the people who make it possible to work for less than they’re worth.

I’m not raising money to ask whether this deserves to exist. I’m raising it to give it the room it needs.

I have the invitation. I have the vision. I have gathered the makers.

Now I need you.

Help build a world where a woman is allowed to be extravagant in her ambitions, strange in her beauty and entirely unreasonable about the size of her dreams.

You can watch a woman become a knight.
Or you can help build the room where it happens.

Step into the Knight Academy, where the research continues with everyone who joins. A classroom. A dressing room. A round table. An open field. Choose where you belong.

I can’t wait to give you a sword. A banner. A crown.

🖤 Niki