How to enter from the exit

Artists: Bianca Schick, Cecilia Casabona, Maren Bang, Noam Y. Son, and Pete Fung. Graphic identity: Alex Foradori and Bianca Schick. Exhibition design: Paskamer.

Cultural institutions today find themselves at a crossroads. The shifting political, economic, and social terrain across Europe and Western countries demands that we critically reassess what these spaces are doing—and for whom. Rather than accepting institutions as they are, we must turn the lens inward: What kind of work are these institutions performing? Whose needs are they serving? What should an art institution offer in 2025, and how might it go about doing so?

How to enter from the exit explores how collaboration and institutional practice might evolve. At its heart lies a fundamental question: How can we harness the power of the commons as a cultural organisation?

How to enter from the exit is a research-driven project and collective curatorial experiment that reimagines cultural institutions as dynamic systems shaped by collaboration, experimentation, and shared knowledge. The exhibition unfolds through three installations and a shared living platform where we invite people and fellow cultural workers to work with us, creating space—both literal and temporal—for practicing "work in common."

We approach this as fundamentally relational rather than transactional work. Instead of simply producing content for consumption or market exchange, we sustain shared cultures of work—building something together that outlasts any single project or output.

This becomes an active method of institution-building through everyday acts of designing, maintaining, caring for spaces, hosting conversations, and negotiating differences. These operational practices form the very foundation of institutional life.

Most importantly, this approach views institutions not as fixed structures but as ongoing processes—dynamic, co-created spaces of labor and care that emerge through the act of commoning itself. By occupying Onomatopee's spaces, we aim to reveal the behind-the-scenes processes of institutional thinking while encouraging alternative formats for imagining how institutions can reproduce and evolve.

General opening hours
October 11–December 21, 2025. Open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday between 12–5pm. 

Dutch Design Week hours
October 18–26, 2025. Open daily between 11am–6pm. 

Baltan Laboratories’ take over at Onomatopee
This Dutch Design Week, Baltan Laboratories moves into a space of experimentation and collaboration. Hosted within Onomatopee, Baltan will cohabit and co-create through open working sessions that invite dialogue, participation, and collective reflection.

October 20–23, 11am–6pm daily. More info here.

Open Dialogue: Who is Paying for This? 
To conclude Baltan Laboratories’ takeover at Onomatopee, we invite you to an open dialogue on the future of cultural institutions. Together, we will discuss strategies amid funding scarcity and the urgent need to build alternative forms of collaboration and mutual support among institutions, cultural spaces, and creative workers.

With Baltan Laboratories, Onomatopee and BAK Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries. October 23, 3–5pm. More info here.

Teun The Raccoon’s take over at Onomatopee
Step into the world of Teun the Raccoon, an independent designer trying to make a living while navigating precarious work, shifting institutions, and the power dynamics that shape today’s design field.

October 24–25. More info here. For up-to-date info on our DDW programme, please check our website.

Free entry for all listed hours.

Program line
How to enter from the exit is the second exhibition in the five-year program The Future Commons and focusses on articulating processes and activities that foster co-creation and coexistence among artists, institutions, and locality where they operate. These activities, marked as -ing, are always ongoing and in the making as they express acts of living: dreaming, working, loving, learning, and healing. Retracing these activities underscores their role in shaping common goods and values and guiding how we care for them and for one another.