The only way is up

OUR ICONIC CONTAINERARCH IT’S ANNUAL NEW SKIN

For the annual DGTL Festival at NDSM (April 18–20), Stichting NDSM-werf and DGTL have once again collaborated to refresh the iconic container arch. In 2025, the redesign was commissioned to Groningen-based artist duo VAAF, consisting of Lotte Masker and Jonna Bo Lammers.

The design for the container arch brings the festival theme New Horizons to life in a vibrant, expressive way. Titled The Only Way Is Up, the artwork features a painted sun that simultaneously resembles an eye. Flanking the sun are various female faces, suggesting a feminist horizon and a forward-looking future.

VAAF creates paintings, illustrations, clothing, and anything that welcomes the use of color. They are best known for their large-scale murals. The duo primarily works with paint, which inspired their name: VAAF, a word that means “paint” in the Groningen dialect. Their style is bold, playful, colorful, feminist, and above all, big.

With this work, VAAF contributes to the continued imagination of the NDSM shipyard as a place for experimentation, encounters and new perspectives.

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