melanie bonajo | Thinking through Touch
Opening during Amsterdam Art Week | 21 – 25 May, 2025
Festive Gallery Night 22 May, 5-9 pm
AKINCI is proud to present the solo exhibition Thinking through Touch by melanie bonajo. The exhibition provides a small overview of bonajo’s oeuvre with three video works and an all-immersive scenography that was realised in collaboration with Théo Demans. TouchMETell (2019), shows children exploring the meaning of boundaries and relational safety, and can be seen as a prelude to When the Body Says Yes (2022), with which bonajo represented the Netherlands at the 59th Venice Biennale. The most recent work, School of Lovers (2024), a collaboration with performers with cognitive disabilities, will be shown for the first time in the Netherlands.
The three video works are rooted in queer, feminist, anti-ableist, and anti-racist perspectives on the body, sex, and intimacy—arising from movements that center embodied knowledge, radical softness, and the right to pleasure beyond normativity.