The Image is Our Voice

Unseen Foundation and Futures Talent Platform invited me as curator and to mentor five talented artists from the Netherlands to develop their projects for The Image is Our Voice. The exhibition took place from the 6th of September until the 13th of October 2019 in Melkweg Expo, Amsterdam.

Exhibition text

Although the projects of the featured artists often incorporate complex narratives, the visual approach and societal interests cumulate in firmly positioned artistic work. All five give a voice to the images they create—whether they were made with a camera, gathered from the internet or fully animated— in order to investigate the world around them and to propose challenging perspectives.

Initially trained as photographers the included artists are all eager to stretch the borders of the medium, which results in prints as well as bent wooden sculptures, a spatial intervention with blue paint, and (multi) screen installations with sound. The research topics range from the paradoxicalities of our ambition to live ‘carbon neutral’ to the rise of extreme right.

The Image is Our Voice is part of the Futures Talent platform, a European photography platform that pools the resources and talent programmes of leading photography institutions across Europe in order to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility of its selected artists. As a member of the platform, Unseen Foundation aims to strengthen the representation of contemporary Dutch photography on an international scale.

The selection was made through a nomination process: Taco Hidde Bakker, Sarah Blokland, Delphine Bedel, Fleurie Kloostra, Bertan Selim and Jenny Smets.

Artists included: Eline Benjaminsen (Norway, 1992), Verena Blok (The Netherlands, 1990), Pleun Gremmen (The Netherlands, 1992), Eva Kreuger (The Netherlands, 1995) and Kevin Osepa (Curaçao, 1994).