THE HAGUE.- This spring, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag provides a platform for visionary new perspectives. In New New Babylon: Visions for Another Tomorrow , leading and emerging visual artists, designers, collectives and activists from around the world share their views of the future. Where do we come from, where are we now and where do we want to be?

The starting point is a key work in the museum’s collection, Constant Nieuwenhuys’s New Babylon (1956-74). In this visionary project, Constant envisioned a society for maximum creativity and freedom for play. This thought-provoking exhibition presents dozens of monumental works that demonstrate the power, beauty and necessity of a radical imagination. It features projects by 25 makers from around the world, including recently acquired works by Steffani Jemison, Moshekwa Langa, Randa Mirza and Emma Talbot. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive public programme, organised in partnership with Leiden University.

Margriet Schavemaker, director of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag: “In New New Babylon, the Kunstmuseum is addressing urgent social themes that affect us at the local, national and global levels. With this year’s NATO summit taking place in the Kunstmuseum’s backyard, this is the perfect time to show that art and imagination play a crucial role in shaping the world we live in – now and in the future. With an extensive events programme as an integral part of the exhibition, the museum is creating a dialogue with the city, politics and science.”

Yasmijn Jarram, curator of contemporary art: “ New New Babylon shows that many contemporary makers are keenly engaged in utopian thinking and imagining a new society. Their works share courage and a love for the world: an alternative, more communal world. Artists make us aware of our interdependence as well as everyone’s individual ability to bring about change. It is very special to bring these forward-thinking visions together in our historic Berlage building."

Zippora Elders, guest curator: “Constant Nieuwenhuys wrote manifestos, founded artist groups, painted intriguing scenes and made designs for the future. He was creative and disciplined: a bold and well-read thinker, very concerned with society, an animal and music lover, and truly passionate about the arts. Constant longed for what could be possible post revolution and beyond capital: ultimate equity and radical play! An ever topical and familiar desire that today’s artists critically reflect on, too.”

New Babylon

A world without borders. Where people are free to play and travel without the burden of work and possessions and the threat of war. Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920-2005) expressed his ideas about a new world in one of the most visionary and extensive visual art projects in post-war art history: New Babylon . Witnessing post-war reconstruction and social changes in the 1950s due to increasing automation, CoBrA artist Constant emerged as a true visionary, using models, constructions, maps, paintings, drawings, watercolours, prints, films, texts, lectures and temporary environments to show what a new world could look like.

Visions for Another Tomorrow

No fewer than 25 contemporary makers from around the world show that Constant's quest is more relevant than ever. What would New Babylon look like if it were conceived today, by other people and bodies? Can we still imagine and dream as freely 75 years later? The contemporary works propose radical visions of possible other worlds, in which existing boundaries and contradictions are lifted.

In the augmented reality project At Night I See the Future (2019-ongoing), Edwin Zwakman asks what we will see when we look out of our windows in the year 2084. What would it be like if we had to leave our homes due to ecological or social circumstances? A sea of ​​children’s drawings from around the world merges continents in Oscar Murillo’s installation disrupted requencies (2013-22), while Ambassade van de Noordzee gives a political voice to the sea and all the creatures that live in and around it.

Emma Talbot’s impressive, 14-metre-long painting on silk Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (2022) takes a dreamy, philosophical and linguistic approach to the state of our world and the ecological decline we find ourselves in. With World Sensorium (2000), Gayil Nalls has created a fragrance from plants around the world. Each nation selected an aromatic plant that held the deepest cultural and historical significance for them, such as the (originally Turkish) tulip for the Netherlands. Some of these plants are now threatened with extinction because of the climate crisis.

In Maladapted (2019), Harrison Pearce has created pulsing kinetic sculptures derived from a scan of the artist's brain. In Mogalakwena (2018), Moshekwa Langa has devised an associative map of his coming of age in South Africa during the apartheid era. Connected by strings of yarn, objects from Langa’s past form a landscape based on feeling and memory rather than geopolitical borders. This work – recently acquired by the Kunstmuseum Den Haag – will be shown for the first time in the museum.