Manifold Books
Kraijenhoffstraat 34, 1018RL Amsterdam
Please note: the entrance is located in the corridor between number 30 and 32

Until May 16 we are open by appointment. Regular opening hours (during exhibitions only): Fridays and Saturdays from 1-5 pm, or make an appointment via e-mail or Instagram 


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location: MAP



Telephone Telephone +31
05/06/’26, 5:30-7:30pm
with Jeremy Johnston
and Yann Chateigné Tytelman

language: English
to join, please RSVP by 04/06/’26
via info@manifoldbooks.nl
tickets available at the door: €0,-/€4,-/€8,-


Dear reader, 

Please join us for Telephone Telephone +31, a series of five meetings on the future (of) artists’ legacies organised by Manifold Books in collaboration with Darling Green and curator Alicja Melzacka. The programme addresses practical, creative, and ethical questions surrounding artists’ legacies from a range of perspectives, including those of curators, archivists, legal advisors and artists themselves.

Telephone Telephone is a regular meeting organised by the NYC-based curatorial office Darling Green to discuss the meaning, uses and methodology of the exhibition form. Part seminar, part reading group and part gathering of co-conspirators, Telephone Telephone is a self-organising experiment in dialogue and cooperative discovery.

The first meeting takes place on Friday, 05/06/2026, from 5:30 to 7:30pm. 

Our guests Jeremy Johnston and Yann Chateigné Tytelman will approach the topic from a curatorial perspective, informed by their engagement with, amongst others, the legacies of Rosemary Mayer, Scott Burton and Peter Downsbrough. After a brief presentation, the meeting will unfold as a conversation with the public. 

To join, please RSVP to info@manifoldbooks.nl. Entry is based upon a ʻpay what you can’ system varying from €0,- to €4,- or €8,-. Please note that the conversations are held in English. 


Save the dates for the upcoming sessions:

Saturday, 27/06/2026, from 3:00 to 5:00pm
Our guests will be Antwerp-based artist Peter Lemmens, custodian of de Appel Archive Nell Donkers, and Dutch art historian Miriam Windhausen, independent consultant specialising in artists’ legacies, who will talk about infrastructures, classification systems, and different forms of distribution of artistic work. 

Sunday, 19/07/2026, from 3:00 to 5:00pm
Our guests will be Andrew Walsh-Lister, typographer, writer, and curator based between the UK and the US and a member of the Lily Greenham Advisory Group, and the Amsterdam based artist Philipp Gufler, a member of the Paul Hoecker Research Group. They will talk about how their artistic and curatorial practices enter into a dialogue with other artists’ legacies.

The fourth and fifth Telephone Telephone +31 meetings will take place after the summer break and will be announced asap.

Looking forward to seeing you,
Manifold Books



still on view:

Manifold Books #31
Carrying morning on their tongues 
JJJJJerome Ellis
curated by Alicja Melzacka and Maartje Fliervoet
16/05/’26-11/07/’26

Manifold Books #30
Be My Ghost 
Arefeh Riahi
06/03/’26-19/07/’26


Carrying morning on their tongues is an exhibition by JJJJJerome Ellis that presents four bodies of work. These works enact and channel the embodied experience of time on various scales; here, time is a river, an exposure, a musical note, or a breath.

A music album and artist’s book, The Clearing (2021), together with Aster of Ceremonies (2023), a book of hymns presented here alongside the audiobook, attune with great sensitivity to the relationship between the time of reading and the time of listening. Through JJJJJerome’s experiments with notation, transcription, and audio description, multiple visual and auditory layers converge and diverge. Alongside these works, a selection of photographs from the series Exposure (2024-) and the video 251218 (2024) introduce two distinct timelines, unfolding in an uneven rhythm around the asymmetrical architecture of Manifold Books.

ʻWhat is a clock? Is it an instrument? A body with hands and a face? A capitalist rosary?’ asks JJJJJerome in The Clearing. ʻWhat is a syllable? A bell held on a glottal hilltop? The indestructable? A gathering of sound (...) What is a bell? Why is it that the same bell that calls us to prayer and meditation called the enslaved to the field? Can black song heal these traumas arising from time and sound? How can we create gentler, more humane clocks?’

JJJJJerome’s work reverberates in the gap between personal memory and histories of colonisation and resistance—histories that were poorly and partially documented and that require another kind of historiography, or rather, another approach to the past: one that looks to human and non-human ancestors for guidance and dislodges time from its linear course, tied to productivity and extraction. ʻMy thesis is that blackness, dysfluency and music are forces that open time,’ offers JJJJJerome.

In Be My Ghost Arefeh Riahi takes the listener on a metaphorical phantom ride. The sound piece consists of three letters written and read by the artist in which she takes Manifold Books’ founder Maartje Fliervoet on a fictive walk through Tehran, her hometown. Departing from her long term engagement with hauntology and undecidability, the work explores the relation between the migrant and the so-called host, complicated by the factor of time. The first episode has been installed in our staircase since March 6. The second and third episode will be released over the coming months, in tandem with upcoming activities.

About our current year programme Of Ghosts and Flowers
Of Ghosts and Flowers proposes a transition from our 2024 programme The Sphinx’s Riddle around grief and transformation to an exhibition and event series about non-linear time experiences in 2025 and 2026. The urgency for this arose from the content of this programme, and how the system of linear time imposed on us disintegrates in the face of death, grief and profound mental and physical transformative processes. In addition, it feels urgent to formulate alternative forms of dealing with time because our system of linear time is linked to our growth-oriented economic system; the biggest driver of climate change. The embodied sensations we will look into include non-human perspectives as well as human ones. Of Ghosts and Flowers departs from the work of Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014). So far, the programme includes exhibitions and projects by Rosemary Mayer, Steve Kado, Clem Edwards, Francisca Khamis Giacoman and Arefeh Riahi.  



Thanks to SB34, Erfan Abdi, Lara Khaldi and Radio Alhara. 

Carrying morning on their tongues, Be My Ghost and Telephone Telephone +31 have been made possible by:
Stroom Den Haag
Mondriaan Fonds
Pictoright Fonds
Cultuurfonds
AFK

Sadly, we are currently unable to process any unsolicited project proposals.


~So far, Manifold Books has organized shows/projects with: Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Steve Kado, Clem Edwards, Rosemary Mayer, Natalia Papaeva, Philipp Gufler/the Paul Hoecker Research Group, Dagmar Bosma, Katja Mater, Daniel Godínez-Nivón, Ana Navas, Marianna Maruyama, Nicoline van Harskamp, Selma Selman, Dan Zhu, Ada M. Patterson, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Isabelle Sully and Matt Hinkley (Unbidden Tongues), Hadassah Emmerich, Eileen Quinlan, Melissa Gordon, To See the Inability to See, Ada Van Hoorebeke, Kato Six, Riet Wijnen, Patricia Esquivias, Aglaia Konrad, Özlem Altın, Gwenneth Boelens, Barbara Neves Alves, Baha Görkem Yalım, Martín La Roche Contreras, Dongyoung Lee, Maartje Fliervoet

Each of these artists have made unique book editions, see a selection of photos



About Manifold Books
Founded in 2015 by Maartje Fliervoet in her Amsterdam studio space, Manifold Books’ activities may be best described as a spatial investigation exploring connections between art and books. With each exhibition a few titles are added to its book collection (all including artists’ interventions). Manifold Books has received funding from: the Mondriaan Fund (2019, 2023-2026); AFK (2020, 2021, 2022, 2025 and 2026); het Cultuurfonds (2021-22, 2024 and 2025), Stichting Symbio (2025), the Netherland-America Foundation (2025). This year, its programme will be supported by the AFK, het Cultuurfonds, Pictoright Fonds, Stroom Den Haag and the Mondriaan Fund. 


Manifold Books is a foundation with an independent board consisting of:
Arnisa Zeqo (chair)
Stephanie Noach (secretary)
Paul Domela (treasurer)