No Neutral Space: A Collective Refusal of Ahoy’s Militarized Venue ~ A growing movement of artists and cultural workers is challenging one of the largest funding bodies in the Netherlands, the Mondriaan Fund. In 2024, Art Rotterdam was hosted at Ahoy, a venue that for 35 years has also hosted the NEDS arms fair, welcoming manufacturers such as Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin in 2023 & 2024, whose weapons have been directly used in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Though these companies were recently pulled from the upcoming 2025 edition, the structural complexity of Ahoy and NEDS remains. Read more and sign the OPEN LETTER here.
(Excerpt from the letter) “If Prospects, a centrepiece of Art Rotterdam, is a fair dedicated to young, emerging and diverse artists, then what does it mean to hold this celebrative cultural occasion in a venue that hosts the Netherlands Defence and Security Exhibition (NEDS), an arms fair integral to the global weapons trade? This is not an abstract question…”
A growing movement of artists and cultural workers is challenging one of the largest funding bodies in the Netherlands, the Mondriaan Fund. In 2024, Art Rotterdam was hosted at Ahoy, a venue that for 35 years has also hosted the NEDS arms fair, welcoming manufacturers such as Elbit Systems and Lockheed Martin in 2023 & 2024, whose weapons have been directly used in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Though these companies were recently pulled from the upcoming 2025 edition, the structural complexity of Ahoy and NEDS remains.
This silence extends into the cultural sector. By continuing to host Prospects at Ahoy in 2026, the Mondriaan Fund continues to legitimize the arms trade and its violence through art.
(Excerpt from the letter) “We are witnessing cultural institutions like Mondriaan Fund partake in artwashing without a hitch of critique. Within the same cultural spaces that claim to celebrate freedom, creativity and criticality, genocide is diminished to a matter of ‘personal opinion.’ This is not a neutral act. It is a political act that masks Western military responsibility for the insurmountable killing of people of the Global Majority and the irreversible destruction of all life on Earth.”
This letter is an urgent call from the very artists, cultural workers, and publics that the Mondriaan Fund claims to serve. It demands the removal of Art Rotterdam from Ahoy and insists on an ethical realignment of the Fund’s cultural commitments.
(Excerpt from the letter) “…what does it say about our cultural present if the art market is so tightly entangled with the war industry that artists’ ‘only choice’ is to partake in its profits? Is this the legacy the Mondriaan Fund wishes to create for emerging artists—one that begins with complicity?”
👉 To read and sign the open letter: noneutralspace.org
In solidarity,
Collective Refusal