KABK Graduation Show 2026 Spotlights Body, Entropy and AI

A flesh-like sculptural installation in which "body, material, object and environment enter relations of mutual dependency" anchors the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) presentation in the latest Dezeen School Shows. The Graduation Show 2026 displayed more than 220 works by more than 220 international graduates across bachelor's, master's and PhD programmes, with projects ranging from sustainability to quantum physics.

The school describes its pedagogy in its own statement: "At the academy, classrooms function as laboratories where students experiment, and tutors stimulate rather than direct." Each tutor combines teaching with a professional practice in the cultural sector. Workshop facilities cover textiles, ceramics, wood, metal, traditional printing and a 3D Lab with 3D printing.

Roni(a) Johansson, Bachelor Fine Arts, presents Maintenance is Maintenance is Maintenance is Maintenance, a performance and installation forming "a temporary climate" of mutual dependency. Water acts as both material and infrastructure, "continuously altering the conditions of the work through melting, saturation, drying, corrosion, evaporation and accumulation." Rather than representing maintenance, the work produces conditions that make maintenance necessary.

Irja Linnerud, Bachelor Interactive Media Design, shows Will We Align?, an installation inspired by quantum communication. Its two central light sources are entangled: when one changes, so does the other. The behaviour takes its cue from quantum entanglement, and the work asks "how do we engage with technologies and systems that are difficult to see, understand or influence?"

Jamie Smith, Bachelor Photography, traces the export of Europe's discarded vehicles in Aftermarket. Almost 750,000 used vehicles failed road standards or lost desirability this year, according to the project, and are shipped to Africa — more than half from Europe. "As European governments wash their hands of the old and embrace the new, the question of who bears the responsibility for what was arises," Smith writes.

Anahita Karimi, Bachelor Textile and Fashion, challenges what she calls "the illusion of human superiority" in Between Reins and Teeth, using garments, living organisms and sculptural installation to position the body as a site of interdependence.

Alexandria Liiv, Bachelor Interior Architecture and Furniture Design, reinterprets the logic of wired garden fences in reclaimed mattress foam. Soft Fence proposes "emotionally responsive physical limits that shift alongside human relationships."

Ruben Dijkstal, Bachelor ArtScience, builds a kinetic sound installation from the slow sinking of brick streets. Inklinking functions as a membrane suspended between architecture and soil, revealing "the fragile balance between order and entropy."

Claire Robin Santen, Master Non Linear Narrative, turns to the Troll A platform — at 472 metres on the North Sea seabed, taller than any building on land in Europe. Beyond the Horizon and Below the Waterline translates the invisibility of extractive structures through video and a sound-transducing steel platform underfoot.

Stella Kechagioglou, Master Interior Architecture, launches Gallery Zero, described as the first self-organised common space within KABK, an evolving framework that "questions traditional notions of authorship."

Zizi Mitrou, Master Industrial Design, makes ceramic glazes from restaurant waste in A Trace of Dinner, collaborating with local restaurants on menus attuned to glazing possibilities.

Gintarė Razmaitė, Master Type and Media, draws on Lithuanian wood carving for the type family Ladder, with diacritics abstracted so headlines keep their rhythm.

Priyageetha Dia, Master Artistic Research, presents Litany for a Failing Machine, an installation built around a sermon assembled through a language model's text-prediction process, examining how "artificial intelligence inherits and amplifies older regimes of epistemic domination."

Fenna Jensma, Master Photography and Society, mounts what she calls "a counter-offensive against the visual regimes of far-right politics" in Fabricated Fears, unpacking images circulated by two far-right Dutch political parties.

Simcha Ziya Moïse, Bachelor Graphic Design, treats the grid as "an active participant" in Negotiating the Grid, using the circle within different grid systems to redistribute authorship in image-making.

The department heads listed for the academy include Carl Johan Högberg, Antoinette Vonder Mühll, Lauren Alexander and thirteen others. Whether these graduates' frameworks — from waste glazes to self-organised galleries — travel beyond The Hague will become clear as they establish the individual practices the academy says its teaching is designed to produce.