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04/09/2026

04/06/2026

Flowing & Grounding
A Qigong Practice of Gathering, Circulating & Settling Energy with Optional Single-Needle Acupuncture

As part of Glaze Field Trip, the solo exhibition of Wil van Blokland, this workshop explores Qi through Traditional Chinese Qigong, breath, movement, sound, and optional acupuncture.

Guided by Qigong Sifu & licensed acupuncturist Yiwen, the session takes place in the gallery, inviting participants to experience the body as an energetic landscape shaped by posture, breath, and awareness.

Through Eight Brocades (Baduanjin) and Bagua Walking, participants explore how Qi is cultivated through structure, circulated through motion, and integrated through stillness.

The workshop includes rest with tea, a Golden Gong sound meditation, and optional single-needle acupuncture at Baihui (DU20), supporting deep relaxation and integration.

Fluidity and connection are reflected in Wil van Blokland’s ceramic works, extending into embodied experience through movement and awareness.

Open to all levels. Limited to 15 participants. €45 per person. Sign up via link in profile.

Please wear comfortable clothing and easy-to-remove shoes.

29/05/2026

Fire & Earth in the Inner Landscape
A TCM Five Elements Seasonal Workshop in Chinatown

What does Fire look like in the body?
What does Earth feel like in daily food?

As part of Glaze Field Trip, Solo Exhibition by Wil van Blokland, this workshop explores Fire and Earth through Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese ingredients, bodily observation, and the everyday food landscape of Chinatown.

Guided by Thien-Kim Tran, a certified TCM practitioner, the workshop takes place within the exhibition space, using selected Chinese ingredients sourced from nearby Toko Dun Yong as a field of observation.

Fire and Earth are also at the heart of ceramics: clay comes from the earth, while fire transforms it into a lasting form. Taking this material language as a starting point, the workshop invites participants to explore the Five Elements not as abstract theory, but through color, texture, seasonality, everyday use, and bodily association.

Through ingredients such as bitter melon, green tea, millet, sweet potato, beans, and jujube, participants will discuss how Fire and Earth may be recognized, interpreted, and felt in food, emotion, body, and daily life.

The workshop will close with gentle body observation, simple acupressure practices, and a shared reflection on what each person may need more of: cooling, warmth, movement, rest, grounding, or nourishment.

Limited to 12–15 participants
€35 per person
Sign up via link in profile

Please note: this workshop offers a cultural and educational introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is not a medical consultation or diagnosis.

23/05/2026

Workshop: Sips from the Fields
A Black Tea Journey from China’s Wuyi Mountain to Dutch Soil

Sips from the Fields is part of a series of thematic gatherings taking place during Glaze Field Trip — Solo Exhibition by Wil van Blokland.

Held among Wil’s ceramic works, the series is shaped by her forty-year journey with clay and her long-standing cultural exchanges between China and the Netherlands.

This edition is led by Dutch tea sommelier Mariëlla Erkens and connects two tea landscapes: Tongmuguan in China’s Wuyi Mountain, the birthplace of the world’s first black tea, Lapsang Souchong, and Het Zuyderblad, the first Dutch tea plantation.

Through two carefully selected black teas, participants are invited to explore tradition and innovation, Chinese tea heritage and emerging Dutch tea culture through taste, material, and sensory experience.

Limited to 6–8 seats
€45 per person
Sign up via link in profile

21/05/2026

Exhibition on view | Glazed Field Trip | Wil van Blokland Solo Exhibition

Glazed Field Trip takes Wil van Blokland’s sustained ceramic practice as its point of departure, presenting a field-based journey into material, time, and the essence of existence. For more than a decade, the artist has travelled between the Netherlands and Jingdezhen, China, exploring the potential of ceramics as a spiritual medium through different cultural contexts, craft systems, and experiences of kiln fire.

In Wil’s practice, “Field Trip” does not refer simply to travel. Rather, it suggests a hands-on way of entering a site: entering the land, the workshop, the material, the fire, and the unknown. She treats porcelain clay as a canvas, allowing glaze to flow, settle, react, and transform at high temperatures. This substance, seemingly attached to the surface, becomes a subtle thread running through the exhibition, quietly connecting time, condition, and perception.

Her works unfold between control and contingency. Temperature, oxygen, minerals, metals, and kiln fire all participate in their formation, making each field of colour, trace, and glimmer a result that can never be fully predetermined. The recurring ovals, capsules, and abstract forms suggest structures of relation that connect one person to another, and the individual to the world.

Wil once said that she hopes to let “the essence of our existence” show through in her work. This exhibition unfolds from that aspiration. What viewers encounter is not only a body of ceramic works, but also an ongoing spiritual practice between fire and earth. Quiet and restrained, the works preserve, deep within the material, a force that remains open, fluid, and authentic.

📍 Gallery MAI
Geldersekade 30, 1012 BJ Amsterdam
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🕰️ Opening Hours
Tuesday–Sunday, 11:00–18:00
vanblokland