Still / Moving
Past exhibition | MINA Gallery, Amsterdam | January - February 2026
The first public presentation of Studio Sadiq became something I hadn’t anticipated. It wasn’t only the beginning of a new artistic practice; it was also the first time my own work was exhibited alongside that of my mother.
More than a decade after her passing, our work shared the same gallery. Her paintings, created years earlier, entered into conversation with digital works that reveal the act of making itself. One body of work rooted in stillness and material. The other unfolding through movement, process and time.
The exhibition became less about presenting individual artworks and more about exploring how creative work can continue across generations and across mediums.
Two Floors, Two Languages
The exhibition unfolded across two floors of MINA Gallery, home to Amsterdam’s Crypto Art Museum.
The upper floor presented moving digital drawings shown as animated works. Rather than displaying only the finished image, each piece revealed its own creation: layers appearing, disappearing and settling into form. Motion became part of the artwork itself, allowing visitors to experience not only the outcome but also the process behind it.
The making of Japanese Sprinkles.
Japanese Sprinkles began with a vintage painting whose colours quietly stayed with me. While drawing on my iPad, I repeatedly returned to that image, for colour inspiration and to test how its atmosphere could be translated into a new visual language.
The recording reveals that process. Rather than presenting a finished artwork, it captures the movement between observation and intuition: colours being adjusted, forms emerging, decisions being made and reconsidered. What remains is not a reproduction of the original painting, but a digital work carrying traces of the same palette and mood.
The lower floor brought together a selection of paintings by Annemieke Blokhorst. Originally exhibited during the Florence Biennale in 2008, these works became part of a new dialogue rather than a retrospective. Displayed alongside the digital works, they revealed unexpected parallels despite the differences in medium, time and process.
Physical and Digital
Although the exhibition explored digital media, every work was presented in a physical gallery setting. Visitors encountered paintings and digital works in exactly the same way: moving through the space, pausing, looking and returning.
Following the exhibition, the works continued beyond the gallery in different forms. The selected pieces became available as fine art prints through Studio/Sadiq, while a number of digital editions were released on the blockchain and became available as NFTs.
Selected works were also released as digital editions on the blockchain and made available as NFTs. To those unfamiliar: an NFT can be understood as a digitally owned edition of an artwork, with its provenance and authorship permanently recorded.
The collection is hosted on OBJKT, an open marketplace for digital art: view works on OBJKT.com
Rather than replacing one another, these formats allow the work to exist across different contexts while remaining connected to the same artistic practice.
Carrying the Work Forward
Annemieke Blokhorst (1956–2013) painted intuitively, often with her hands, often losing herself completely in the process. Although self-taught, she exhibited internationally and her work found its way into private collections.
Today, her work continues through the Legacy Collection, preserving her paintings as carefully produced prints while introducing them to a new generation through digital editions.
For me, exhibiting our work together marked the beginning of Studio Sadiq. It was the moment when an idea that had lived quietly for years finally took shape.
Looking back, I realise the exhibition’s title carried more meaning than I understood at the time. Still / Moving became a reflection on how creative work continues to evolve across time, mediums and generations. Paintings became prints. Digital drawings became moving images. Selected works found new life as digital editions. And perhaps most importantly, a shared artistic conversation kept moving forward.
It was also the start of paying it forward: in honour of her life and work, 20% of all profits from Studio Sadiq’s art activities are donated to organisations supporting mental health and suicide prevention.
Curated and presented by Studio Sadiq. With thanks to MINA Gallery and Bart Bloemers, the initiator and curator of the Crypto Art Museum Amsterdam.