Welcome to EX: exhibitions in Cultural Heritage

EXbunker zonder klimop in het Wilhelminapark

All about EXbunker

what I have now

Tagine en Tulpen

Fatine Benouari

October 3, 2026 - November 1, 2026

All about EXboot

what I have now

My body is warming up, please wait for a while

Yingtong Zhou

October 1, 2026 - November 1, 2026

Plattegrond van Utrecht met de wijken Binnenstad, Noordwest, Leidsche Rijn, Zuidwest, Noordoost, snelwegen A2, A27.

All about EXtern

what I'll have

Het kriebelt in mijn buik en ik weet niet of het vlinders of lintwormen zijn

Lesse Melijn van der Veer

October 25, 2026 - November 21, 2026

Exhibitions in Cultural Heritage

Exhibitions in Cultural Heritage

We are EX: EXbunker, EXboot & EXtern. We were once a World War II bunker and a former Zandpad prostitution boat. Now we fill our spaces monthly with groundbreaking new art. Come take a look!

September

October

November

now

all exhibitions

We are EX

We are EX. Groundbreaking, accessible, and dedicated to emerging artists.

It began in 2014 with EXbunker in a former World War II bunker in Wilhelminapark. In 2019, EXboot was added, an exhibition space housed in a former prostitution boat at 't Zandpad.
We present art to everyone who encounters us in the unique public spaces where we are located. Admission is free, and our doors are open—especially to those who don't often encounter art.

The artists presenting their work are often recent graduates. For artists in this phase, EX offers a venue to exhibit, as well as support in the form of coaching and a budget for the realization of their work. The artists are often present at their work as mentors or speakers during the exhibition reception.

EX brings accessible, groundbreaking art to a diverse audience of enthusiasts and passers-by.

Artists

Meet some of the artists who recently had an exhibition at one of EX's locations.

Lonneke Thijs

Lonneke Thijs is a visual artist, art educator, and animator based in Utrecht.Drawing on her background in sociology, she creates absurd and colourful stories that explore social issues and examine the systems that shape society. Through a playful and intuitive approach to animation, her subconscious gives rise to narratives and characters, leaving room for experimentation, imagination, and humour. Her former Villa Achterwerk obsession also shines through, along with a healthy dose of commotion.

Lesse Melijn van der Veer

We don't know enough about the way things work. How the food we eat travels from the mouth to the sewerage, how the roads we use are made, why we are convinced of certain things, where our gut feeling comes from, what it's telling us... Lesse Melijn van der Veer (2001, Bunnik) takes on the role of scientist, sports trainer, priest, toilet lady, or whatever fits best, to explore topics that are so visible that they have become invisible. The body becomes a tool to communicate, equalize and sympathize. In works that can differ from small to grotesque the audience is invited to question who decides where reality starts and child-like fantasy begins.

Fatine Benouari

As an artist and designer, Fatine Benouari explores bicultural identity, migration and cultural fusion. Rooted in her Moroccan-Dutch background, she connects traditional Moroccan and Dutch craftsmanship with contemporary textile forms. Through material, print and silhouette, her work creates a dialogue between heritage and environment, bringing personal memories and shared stories together.

Manilo Refos

Manilo (2005, Utrecht) is a passionate creator who operates in several fields of the art world. As an art educator, he attaches great value to broadening the cultural horizons of others, particularly by drawing attention to a more inclusive art history.As an artist, he works with obedience to intuition. Strong fascinations and hyperconnectivity are employed as tools to create large series of works that refer to one another and build an internal network of metaphors and symbolism.

Yingtong Zhou

Yingtong’s practice lands on drawing, performance and poetry. Her drawing began with a reflection on the complexities of the mother–daughter bond, rooted in her relationship with her mother, and with an ongoing writing and documenting into the origins, presence, and becoming of the self. It has since expanded into an exploration of how intimate, fragmented forms of embodiment might be translated into visual language, while tracing and articulating ineffable experiences of love, attachment, absence, and loss.

Studio HANS

Hannah Pater (1996), working under the name Studio HANS, creates photographic art with a feminist and activist character. Her work explores people, bodies, and imperfection, translating social, political, and personal questions into powerful images. As a self-taught photographer, she combines her background in theatre with photography, using mise-en-scène and composition to find new ways of capturing stories and emotions.

Dagmar Pouwelse

Dagmar Pouwelse (1997) is a multimedia artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her work originates from encounters with materials that are often regarded as waste or surplus. She transforms these materials into new forms and combines them with fragments of herself. Her working process is experimental, allowing room for unconventional uses of materials, which contributes to the fragmentary nature of her work.

Marit Hofman

Marit Hofman is a multidisciplinary maker with a focus on media and bioart. She works experimentally with both analog and digital techniques to tell stories in an immersive way.Marit engages with the ethics of creative processes by incorporating natural, circular processes. She works, for example, with fermentation and canvases grown by bacteria. She combines this with media art such as photography and film to create both images and materials that emerge from a circular collaboration with the world around her.

Cat Elfrink

Cat Elfrink works with whatever is within reach. He takes elements from his surroundings out of their original context and transforms them. These range from found scrap wood, construction waste, furniture, cardboard, and hardware to videos and everyday objects. He is particularly drawn to materials that are considered worthless—things that are often overlooked without ever being truly seen. These found objects and materials become the building blocks of his work, where they are assembled in ways that are pragmatic, awkward, cumbersome, and inventive.

Thomas L. Fontein

Thomas Luigi Fontein (Milano, 2002) is an Italian-Dutch photographer based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He graduated in Photography at the Utrecht School for the Arts (HKU) in 2025. “Photography is a way for me to embrace myself, to feel at home. I use my camera to connect with the world around me and simultaneously with myself. Ungraspable, not always visible phenomena and processes of nature and society fascinate me. For example; the forming of mountains, the continuous cycle of clouds and how our mental state relates to our environment. With my camera I build a bridge between my inner- and outer landscape. I want to research the cycles and processes we go through as humans and the relationship between our inner experience and our outside environment. How can we learn about ourselves by observing the world around us?”

Meet all the artists

Would you like to help us?

You can help us by volunteering or making a donation.

Donations

Because we do not charge an entrance fee or rent for the exhibition spaces, our income consists mainly of donations and subsidies.

Donations help us keep our spaces open. Send me an email, and I'll be happy to respond. Every donation is tax-deductible because the EX Foundation has Cultural ANBI status.

Volunteer work

Would you welcome my visitors and volunteer to look after my art? The artists exhibiting with me are often present during opening hours. Unfortunately, they're not always available, and I'd like to keep the exhibition open an extra day, namely on Fridays from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Would you like to help me for a fee of €20 per afternoon in the EXbunker?

Subsidies

EXutrecht is subsidized by the municipality of Utrecht