Three Shadows Photography Centre Beijing
16 December 2022 - 10 April 2023
Traveling exhibition 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. Made in collaboration with co-curator He Yining, earlier shown at Shanghai Centre of Photography (6 August - 10 October 2022).
Promoting deeper communication between China and the Netherlands is one of the main motivations for this exhibition project. 2022 marked the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and the Netherlands.
Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam
18 June - 3 October, 2021
Since 2014 I've been researching the works of photographer and journalist Ellen Thorbecke (1902-1973). In 1931 she left Berlin for Beijing. For this trip she bought her first camera. Thorbecke developed into a compelling photographer who provided her photos with engaged observations about the people and places she visited. She made reports in a lively candid style with an eye for the vitality of street life and has produced several photo books including Peking Studies (1934) and People in China (1935). For the Nederlands Fotomuseum I curated a selection of the works she made in China. The book Ellen Thorbecke from Peking to Paris (expected June 2021) I edited in collaboration with art historian Rik Suermondt presents a full retrospect of her works.
Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival, Xiamen, China
27 November 2020 - 3 January, 2021
For this festival I curated two exhibition within the section of the discovery award. For Watering My Horse, photographer Xu Xiaoxiao followed the lives of the people along the foot of the Great Wall. She started with the section from the Ming dynasty and takes us to the ruins of the older parts in an attempt to discover the impact of fast-growing China on this massive landmark. She asked herself the question what the wall reflects today? The works in the exhibition won the award for Outstanding Female Photographer.
In his project Go to the Alien Street cineast Hua Weicheng combines photography, experimental video and documentary clips shot in an abandoned amusementpark. The result can be read as a critical contemporary tribute to pragmatism, inventiveness, diversity and weirdness of life. It’s a homage to spontaneous growth and of course to the muse of the photographer: Mr Sun.
BredaPhoto, De Grote Kerk Breda
September 9th - October 25, 2020
In collaboration with He Yining
The exhibition China Imagined, curated in collaboration with He Yining, gives an insight into contemporary Chinese photography. We feel the urgency to make exhibitions like these to help bridge an undeniably gap of incomprehension between western and Chinese audiences. China Imagined presents over 20 visual projects made by both Chinese and foreign photographers, artists and archivists covering contemporary issues and developments within China. This exhibition will be the first major survey of Chinese contemporary photography covering the past decade.
Jimei x Arles International Photofestival
November 2018 - January 2019
In collaboration with Timothy Prus and The Archive of Modern Conflict
*with the worlds first ever Sandworm Jelly Photo Contest
A lot of these vernacular albums, catalogues and prints are part of a fascinating and often overlooked collective Chinese memory that we explore in this exhibition Anything That Walks, Vernacular Food Photography from China. Most materials are extracted from the collection of the Archive of Modern Conflict sourced by Thomas Sauvin and Ruben Lundgren over the last 8 years. The exhibition playfully explores and celebrates the role of food within contemporary Chinese history in a visual explosion of photographs.
Brokenice: 160118 - 170811
Jimei x Arles photofestival, Xiamen, China
November 2017 - January 2018
In collaboration with Chinese blogger BrokenIce
In his spare time blogger BrokenIce hits the streets of old Beijing armed with a camera and one request: “Tell me one thing about yourself that is true and one thing that is not true”. It's a simple concept, consistently executed, that led to remarkable results. The blog is a collection of his findings on the street titled according to the date of the post. It combines observations on the street and full body portrait photographs with detail shots of the out ts and answers given by the models. Which part of the answer is true and which part is not often stays unclear adding an extra layer to the portraits.
Ullens Centre for Contemporary Arts (China)
April 2015 - June 2015
The Photographers Gallery (U.K.)
In collaboration Martin Parr, Thijs groot Wassink and Aperture.
The status of the photobook has undergone a major reappraisal during the past decade. Produced in a wide range countries and contexts for over a century, photobooks have added enormously to our understanding of photography and its social and cultural importance. Although China boasts a fascinating history of photobook publishing, its importance in this larger global history has not been adequately recognized; this exhibition brings to light the richness and diversity of this heritage.
July 2014 - September 2014
In collaboration Martin Parr, Thijs groot Wassink and Aperture.
The status of the photobook has undergone a major reappraisal during the past decade. Produced in a wide range countries and contexts for over a century, photobooks have added enormously to our understanding of photography and its social and cultural importance. Although China boasts a fascinating history of photobook publishing, its importance in this larger global history has not been adequately recognized; this exhibition brings to light the richness and diversity of this heritage.
*Exhibition photos by Martin Parr
Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum (China)
July 2014 - September 2014
In collaboration with FOAM photography museum artistic director Marcel Feil, curator Feng Boyi and Liu Gang
Feng Boyi on the exhibition: "WassinkLundgren is indifferent to whether a photograph is good or bad; the duo does not care about the angle at which it was taken, because the photograph is an experiment. Perhaps they believe that, behind systems and norms hide a certain discursive power, and they hope to place this discursive power back in their own hands, as the embodiment of individual speech. The meaning of this experiment is the use of a new visual idea to highlight both the circumstances in which they find themselves and its collision with our habitual modes and lived experiences of viewing images"
Print Shop New York
Unseen Photofair Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
September 2013
In collaboration with Lucid-Ly Project Space
While the Unseen Photo Fair took place in Amsterdam, WassinkLundgren is in New York to make a new body of work. At the fair, WassinkLundgren’s new images will be presented in a print shop set up at a project space. From the Aperture office in New York, the duo will send a first edit of their work to Unseen. One image will be printed out, displayed, and offered for sale. Visitors will then have 10 minutes to decide if they would like to purchase this one-off edition. However, if the print is not sold within the allocated time, it will be destroyed and the original file will be deleted. A next image will roll out of the printer and the process repeats itself.
FOAM photography museum (the Netherlands)
January 2013 - March 2013
In collaboration with curator Kim Knoppers
One Group Show is the first major solo exhibition by the duo WassinkLundgren. This exhibition presents a broad overview of their work, including projects shown for the first time. The work develops from small observations or humorous twists of situations from everyday life. Their starting point is always a social interest in the world around them, but equally interesting to them is how the medium of photography can deform reality. WassinkLundgren playfully subvert some of the unwritten rules of the medium. Like in Tokyo Tokyo, a series of diptychs in which the decisive moment is approached in a lighthearted way. Or Empty Bottles, which catches 24 Chinese people as they scavenge bottles placed by the photographers in various locations.
QUICKSCAN NL#01, Nederlands Fotomuseum (the Netherlands)
January 2010 - March 2010
In collaboration with curator Frits Gierstberg
'Tokyo Tokyo consists of a series of diptychs in which the mythical “decisive moment” of traditional documentary photography is lampooned. In their projects, WassinkLundgren playfully turn the unwritten rules of the photography upside down. But behind the joke is always a serious attempt to expand both the artistic as well as the social significance of their medium.’ (Frits Gierstberg, Dutch Photo Museum, Rotterdam)
In this group exhibition the Dutch photography museum in Rotterdam follows the latest developments in the national photography scene. In this first edition about 25 photographers and artists show their most recent work, some never shown before like Tokyo Tokyo, a work in progress.
Central Academy of Fine Arts (China)
March 2009
In collaboration with curator Kathy Fung and writer Yang Lin
Especially within the first few months after I moved to Beijing I had to get used to all attention I got as a tall foreigner. It was confusing sometimes, I felt kind of famous although I had no idea why. As a joke, I decided to declare myself officially famous and create photographic evidence to prove it. The images and performances in this project explore cultural differences between China and the West by using my 200 cm as a tool. The exhibition was created and during my postgraduate study in Beijing to create online exposure to make my self fulfilling prophecy of being a star come true.
FOAM Photography Museum (the Netherlands)
March 2007 - April 2007
In collaboration with graphic designers Kummer&Herrman and curator Collette Olav
The publication Empty Bottles shows 24 people collecting plastic bottles in Beijing and Shanghai. It was a subject we came across by accident. While setting up the camera, a woman walked into the image and picked up a bit of plastic that we used as a means of focusing in the hazy light. We liked the photograph so we set out to photograph more bottle collectors. We didnʼt want to try to show the subject from the viewpoint of the bottle collectors, but to show it from our own (foreign distance) point of view. This approach resulted in a way of shooting where we planted an empty bottle in front of our view camera and waited until somebody picked it up. Sometimes the bottle was gone before we were behind the camera, other times it lasted more than an hour before someone cared to pick it up. The camera was always in plain view, and the subject of our images only a few meters away. The empty bottle, which almost functioned as a cable release here, decided the moment the film was exposed, and the people in front of the camera directed their own scene on our stage.
For this exhibition we decided to use the high quality printing of the book in our advantage by framing it and hanging it on the wall. In this way we could make full use of the exhibition budget to print our second photography book together.
*Winner Contemporary Photography Book Award Rencontres Arles photography festival 2007