Sonsbeek 2026: Cultural Myths
The final programme of Darkness Reframed presents three artist films that revisit mythological and heroic tales.
The final programme of Darkness Reframed presents three artist films that revisit mythological and heroic tales to explore migration, exile and estrangement. Featured is the film A Dance With Her Myth (2024) by Mounira Al Solh – one of the 18 artists featured in the Sonsbeek 2026 exhibition, where her new sculpture And Europa fled is on view at Park Sonsbeek. Playing Europa herself, Al Solh weaves the ancient tale together with contemporary migrant experiences, highlighting women taking on roles traditionally assigned to men.
Tianyi Zheng’s artist documentary Where Comes Mulan (2026), made in collaboration with Qiao Chu Guo, examines how mythical stories, and cultural and gender identities, are projected onto place — in this case, the legend of Mulan and Mula Township in the Huangpi district, Wuhan, where Mulan is said to have originated and which happens to be Zheng’s ancestral town. Beginning with intimate conversations with relatives and local residents, the film traces how Mulan has been remembered before revealing how local authorities have turned her into a powerful tourism brand. The film shifts registers when performance artist Qiao Chu Guo arrives, embodying Mulan through a queer lens.
Filmed just days after the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024, Yara Said’s The Fall of the Lion (2025) follows Saïd’s first return to Syria after a decade of exile. The film questions myths of freedom and liberation in a society where patriarchy persists, and explores intuition as a survival tool for women and femme bodies living on the margins.
The evening starts with an introduction by Berber Meindertsma, curator of Darkness Reframed, Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg, the director of Sonsbeek art projects, who together will contextualize the films within the theme of ‘memory as a living action’. The screenings are followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers, moderated by Berber, in which they will dive deeper into how they have used mythology to retell their own personal, as well as collective, narratives of exile and migration.
About the Filmmakers and Speakers
Tianyi Zheng, Tin-e, is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Hong Kong and the Netherlands. In her work, which encompasses moving images, installations, found objects, text, and performance, she explores the intertwined relationships between urban space, displacement, memory, and identity in the context of globalization and diaspora. Zheng earned an MFA from the Frank Mohr Institute (2021) and has exhibited at the Simose Art Museum (Hiroshima, 2025), at Art Rotterdam (2025), at K11 Art Village (Wuhan, 2024), and at Het Wilde Weten (Rotterdam, 2023).
Qiao Chu Guo (she/they, born in Jingmen, China, based in the Netherlands) is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, drawing, and sculpture. In their work, they explore the body as a medium for producing and transmitting knowledge, giving a voice to bodies that have been marginalized in the archive. Guo has had solo exhibitions at TAC in Eindhoven and BRUTUS in Rotterdam, and has been selected for the Centrale Fies Fellowship 2026–2027. Group exhibitions include Framer Framed, the Van Abbemuseum, Het Nieuwe Instituut, NDSM Fuse, Kunstlinie Almere, de Fabriek Eindhoven, and Moezeum. Since 2023, Guo has been a member of Metro54.
Yara Said is a visual artist and writer who lives and works in the Netherlands. She works with painting, sound, installations, and text, drawing on long-term research and intuitive composition. Her practice revolves around her love for her people—particularly women—and the stories passed down from generation to generation that transcend borders, wars, and languages. Her work has been featured online and exhibited in galleries and public spaces throughout Europe and the Middle East.
Mounira Al Solh is a visual artist who lives and works in Beirut and Zutphen. Irony and self-reflection are central to her multidisciplinary work, which explores women’s issues, traces the patterns of micro-histories, bears witness to the impact of conflict and displacement, is socially engaged, and can simultaneously be both politically and poetically escapist. She represented Lebanon at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 and has exhibited her work internationally at various venues; most recently, solo exhibitions took place at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2025); the Museumsquartier Osnabrück, Germany (2022); and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2022).
Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg is a curator, producer, and initiator based in Arnhem. She has been the director of Sonsbeek art projects since 2024. Gouwenberg has realized leading projects with institutions such as LAS Art Foundation (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam), and Performa (New York). In 2022, she co-curated the Dutch Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, where Melanie Bonajo’s acclaimed installation *When the Body Says Yes* was presented. She also served as director of Jester in Genk, Belgium.
Berber Meindertsma is the assistant curator of Sonsbeek 2026. After completing a master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University College London, and working at the Serpentine Galleries and the Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art in London, she is now an Amsterdam-based curator and writer specializing in contemporary art. From 2019 through 2024, she was part of the core team at Het HEM, where she contributed to the development of site-specific art commissions, collaborative projects, and the digital editorial and artistic platform The Couch. In 2026, she co-curated the exhibition *Currents 12: Camping Out* with Maia Kenney at Jester in Genk, Belgium.