“NL Imagined" is a survey of contemporary Dutch photography curated by Yining He and Ruben Lundgren. The exhibition includes the work of 11 established and emerging artists, which all currently live and work in the Netherlands (NL). The exhibition showcase the artists' responses to contemporary topics concerning the history, society and culture of the Netherlands. 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.
“NL Imagined” 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. Through a wide array of creative approaches, the participating artists capture the architecture of sacred spaces, look at nature, community and everyday life, together with topics of colonization, personal identity, and kinship, as topics for reflection. These combine to a newly 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. The Netherlands is a global center for art publishing, with a long history of design excellence, including photo books. “NL Imagined” includes examples of award-winning books published by six leading Dutch publishers and other institutions on loan from the cultural section of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in China. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a range of online and offline sharing and discussion on practices in Dutch photography.
Curated by He Yining (China) and Ruben Lundgren (the Netherlands), “NL Imagined” is a unique cultural project initiated by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in China for the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 2022. After two years of preparation, the exhibition was presented first in August at the Shanghai Center of Photography, and will be on tour from 16 December 2022 at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre (Beijing). Three Shadows cordially invites you to come to Caochangdi to experience these photographers’ diverse perspectives in different contexts and to join us in a visual dialogue with the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is noteworthy that the exhibition responds to “China Imagined” at the 2020 BredaPhoto Festival in the Netherlands and demonstrates the ongoing dialogue and communication between the photographic arts of China and the Netherlands.