Excited to finally announce I am representing the Netherlands in the NL Imagined exhibition, initiated by the Dutch embassy to celebrate fifty years of diplomatic relations with China. Ten images from my Murmurations series are exhibited in the great Shanghai Center of Photography (SCoP) from August 6 to October 9. The group exhibition consists of ten other photographers, including Erwin Olaf, Viviane Sassen, Dana Lixenberg and Erik Kessels.
I am extremely honored to represent the Netherlands in China, among these great Dutch photographers. I can now also announce that Murmurations will be featured at the Singapore International Photography Festival in October and in Sydney as a solo exhibition at the Head on Photo Festival in November. NL Imagined also travels on to Beijing and two other Chinese cities.
Curators Ruben Lundgren and Yining He have smartly curated a fascinating exhibition in this leading photography museum. The starling dances are presented in a large size in the museum, next to work by Erwin Olaf. And there is a 9 meter wide print on the outside. Many thanks to Ruben Lundgren, Yining He, the SCoP and Bart Hofstede from the Dutch embassy in Beijing for this great project.
NL Imagined" is a survey of contemporary Dutch photography and features works from Marwan Bassiouni, Johannes Bosgra, Hans Eijkelboom, Marvel Harris, Erik Kessels, Dana Lixenberg, Corinne Noordenbos, Erwin Olaf, Paulien Oltheten, Viviane Sassen and Gilleam Trapenberg. There are also photo books on display by, for example, Rineke Dijkstra, Robin de Puy, and Awoiska van der Molen.
Through a wide array of creative approaches, the participating artists capture the architecture of sacred spaces and look at nature, community and everyday life, together with topics of colonization, personal identity, and kinship, as topics for reflection. These combine into a new current dialogue between history and the present, between today's reality and what local audiences might imagine about the Netherlands.
Promoting deeper communication between China and the Netherlands is one of the main motivations for this exhibition project. This year marks the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the Netherlands. “NL Imagined” is an essential cultural component of a broader program that has been conceived in celebration of this anniversary.
The exhibition showcases the artists' responses to contemporary topics concerning the Netherlands' history, society and culture. In the collected works of these photographers, we find challenges to established paradigms of both the language and techniques inherent in the Dutch photographic tradition. The approaches taken reflect the artists' efforts to reshape contemporary Dutch photographic arts with greater relevance to the rapidly evolving present times. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a range of online and offline sharing and discussion on practices in Dutch photography.
用镜头“想像荷兰”：从街头素人到鹿特丹市长
《喃喃》是荷兰摄影师约翰内斯·博斯格拉拍摄于2020的作品。新冠疫情迫使约翰内斯·博斯格拉于2020年和2021年待在家附近。在荷兰靠近家中的一个自然保护区，他看到近百万只椋鸟有节奏地飞过深蓝色的天空。这些椋鸟在天空中形成抽象的景观，形成一种崇高的音乐节奏。博斯格拉完全被这不断展开的编排迷住了，他并不仅仅只是记录鸟群的行为，而是以自己的极简主义风格呈现它们的“芭蕾舞”。1990年以来，椋鸟的数量减少了40%。通过拍摄椋鸟，博斯格希望诱导人们讨论生物多样性丧失的根源。
上海摄影艺术中心 (SCoP) 荣幸呈现《想像荷兰》（NL Imagined）。《想像荷兰》的作品来自跨越三个代际的摄影艺术家——马万·巴西奥尼、约翰内斯·博斯格拉、汉斯·艾克尔布姆、马维尔·哈里斯、埃瑞克·卡瑟斯、黛娜·利申博格、科琳娜·诺登博斯、欧文·奥拉夫、波林·奥斯登、薇薇安·萨森和吉勒姆·特拉彭伯格。他们借助不同的创作手法，将神圣空间、自然保护、社区与日常、殖民与身份认同、性别与亲情等内容作为反思的议题，借此开启中国观众对于历史与当下，现实和想象中的荷兰的对话。
另一方面，深化中国和荷兰之间的对话这一目标是这个展览项目背后的一个关键动力。2022年是“中荷建交50周年”，该展览亦将是为庆祝“中荷建交50周年”这一周年而构思的更广泛计划中的一个重要文化组成部分。荷兰作为全球艺术出版业的中心之一，拥有摄影出版连续的历史和卓越的设计。本次展览中，SCoP还将呈现由荷兰王国驻华大使馆文化处出借的，来自六家荷兰出版社以及其他机构出版的获奖摄影书籍。展览同期SCoP还会围绕荷兰摄影的教育、出版和机构实践等议题展开线上、线下的分享与讨论。