AMSTERDAM.- Opening at the Amsterdam Museum on Friday, July 11, 2025, is an exhibition about the future: Refresh Amsterdam #3: Imagine the Future. This year, when Amsterdam celebrates its 750th anniversary, the Amsterdam Museum is looking ahead. In the third edition of Refresh Amsterdam, artists and the general public anticipate the future and share their dreams, expectations, and desires. The presentation is composed of three parts: an exhibition with work by fifteen mostly emerging artists, a solo exhibition by Raquel van Haver, and a part where members of the public share their own visions of the future.
15 Amsterdam artists
“In 2025, society faces major issues such as climate change, social inequality, and global power shifts. This calls for new perspectives,” says Nina Folkersma, guest curator of Refresh Amsterdam #3. According to her, artists are like the antennas of society, and experts in imagining new visions. The Amsterdam Museum commissioned fifteen contemporary artists and artists’ collectives who have ties with the city to create new work. From their various creative disciplines, they give a personal take on the future. They encourage visitors to not think of the future as a given, but as just one among many possible scenarios.
The exhibition features works by visual artists, designers, filmmakers, photographers, writers, dancers, and performers. Some artists explore a utopian world in their work, where community and connectedness with nature are core principles. Others direct our attention to the past; after all, we must first understand from where we came, before we can know where we want to go. Other makers focus on the apocalyptic aspects of the future. And there are some makers for whom hope and optimism are of the greatest importance, as an act of resistance. Listed alphabetically:
Frank Ammerlaan (1979, Netherlands)
For his new works for Refresh Amsterdam #3, Frank Ammerlaan drew inspiration from the book Orbital by Samantha Harvey, a poetic and philosophical story about planet Earth from the viewpoint of six astronauts inside an orbital space station. He presents patchwork paintings made from sewn together pieces of cotton and linen. Some of the cloths were soaked by rain or soiled with dust particles and earth in the open air. In others he incorporated meteorite particles. The fabrics appear faded, as if by sunlight, reminiscent of the passage of time. His work is about the “bigger picture”: the realization that everything is forever changing and in motion.
Sebastián Díaz Morales (1975, Argentina)
Since 2016, artist Sebastián Diaz Morales (1975) has filmed the streets of Amsterdam every first [text appears incomplete in the provided document]. In addition, Diaz Morales shows the work One Eye Melting, a video projection of a moving eye. The pupil reflects catastrophes (wars, natural disasters, accidents) and moments of renewal (growing microorganisms, the expanding cosmos, new technologies). The video work shows how destruction and rebirth are deeply connected. Total collapse is not just an ending but also an opportunity to reimagine the future.
Ivna Esajas (year and place of birth withheld)
The works by Ivna Esajas lie somewhere between drawings and paintings. They are representations of people, executed with elegant lines and almost transparent colors. The figures form a unit, intimately intertwined, leaving the viewer guessing as to which body a face, arm, or leg belongs. The individual here is always a “we.” Esajas’s works arise from intuition and are inspired by poetry, literature, myths, and everyday life. She draws connections between present and past in her work, between stories and floating memories. In May 2025, Esajas won the thirteenth edition of the ABN AMRO Art Prize.
Koen Hauser (1972, Netherlands)
Koen Hauser conjures through photographic images. He takes inspiration from the richly decorated buildings seen in Amsterdam’s city center, in particular buildings in the style of the Amsterdam School. Hauser translates photographic images into architectural elements and ornaments. These ornaments are in turn based on medical photography. In this way he transforms the original associations with pain, illness, loss, and trauma into a healing experience of beauty and comfort.
Ischa Kempka (1995, Netherlands)
Ischa Kempka’s work is inspired by an archive of images and texts, often with links to feminism, mythology, and archaeology. Her new work, He was right about nothing (2025), consists of a gate made from stacked ceramic vases full of symbolic signs. The signs are derived from medieval symbols, or refer to a more recent chapter in history, such as the Amsterdam feminist Wilhelmina Drucker and the Dolle Minas women’s movement. With the work, Kempka invites visitors to look to the past, and from there to work on the changes we want to see in the future.
Minne Kersten (1993, Netherlands)
The video work The Same Room (2023) by Minne Kersten shows a vacated, cluttered bedroom that is slowly filling with water. The flooded room elicits visions of disasters and water’s destructive power. But also a feeling of calm after the storm. The work invites us to think about the end as a transitional state, rather than something definitive.
Natascha Libbert (1973, Netherlands)
In Natascha Libbert’s photographs, the destructive power of nature and humankind is often portrayed. Her images show the diverse ways in which we interact with the Earth. Among the things Libbert presents in Refresh Amsterdam #3 is a large-format photo of a piece of debris from a Boeing 747. Once called the Queen of the Skies, this giant airliner now sits in aircraft graveyards, reduced to scrap metal. Libbert focuses on moments of destruction, yet always with an eye for the potential of restoration.
Brigitte Louter (1996, Netherlands)
Brigitte Louter creates installations, sculptures, and drawings. She is interested in the human drive to structure, measure, and map a world that often does not resonate with a desire for order and simplicity. In the exhibition she begins with an average filing cabinet. Behind the cabinet is a thought model in which drawings of events and experiences in the city that are difficult to measure can be seen. These are sort of like subjective maps of Amsterdam, which form a very specific and open system. Louter sees the installation as a distinctive dataset, offering it as a way to think about the future of the daily use, classification, and archiving of data.
Fiona Lutjenhuis (1991, Netherlands)
Fiona Lutjenhuis made two new drawings for Refresh Amsterdam #3. The diptych, executed in warm pastel hues, depicts a mystical world in which the earthly and the supernatural flow through each other. The drawings show a fantastical landscape filled with mushrooms, a reference to decay and mortality, and eggs, a symbol of birth and new life. Together the drawings form a narrative about the destruction of life and rebirth after death. Like Siwani, Lutjenhuis has been nominated for the prestigious Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025. Two of the four nominated artists will participate in Refresh Amsterdam #3: Imagine the Future at the Amsterdam Museum.
Roshanak and Afagh Morrowatian (1989 and 1984, Iran)
Iranian-born Roshanak Morrowatian works as a dancer, choreographer, and performer. Together with her sister, Afagh Morrowatian, a visual artist and photographer, she made a video for Refresh Amsterdam #3 entitled Protagonist (2025). In the video, a woman moves through the rooms and corridors of the Willet-Holthuysen House. The woman’s body appears to be a decorative object within the stately canal house, but gradually shifts from accessory to main character, the protagonist in her own life. Afagh and Roshanak Morrowatian explore what it means to be a body in diaspora. The video depicts breaking old patterns and laying claim to one’s own place.
Buhlebezwe Siwani (1987, South Africa)
Buhlebezwe Siwani is an initiated sangoma (spiritual healer) and multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the Black female body and African spirituality. Siwani has moved between Cape Town and Amsterdam for four years. For Refresh Amsterdam #3: Imagine the Future, Siwani, together with a diverse group of children from all parts of Amsterdam (ages 6 to 11), created four large drawings in which the perspective of the children is foremost. How do these children see the future? Siwani has been nominated for the prestigious Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025. The shortlist for this incentive prize for talented visual artists was announced by the Mondriaan Fund at the beginning of May.
Patricia Werneck Ribas (1972, Brazil)
Patricia Werneck Ribas (1972) investigates how identities are formed and the role played in this by gender, cultural background, nationality, and history. Her new video work, Schlyper men go forward, takes its audience into the dreamlike inbetween world of four young women on the cusp of adulthood. They are young and carefree. Yet they are simultaneously stuck in social norms and existing power relations. Is it possible to break free from oppressive systems and “sail across” to another, more liberated future?
Don Yaw Kwaning (1990, Netherlands) and Maurits de Bruijn (1984, Netherlands)
A barrier, typically of wire, enclosing an area to prevent or control access or escape is the title of the new work by artist Don Yaw Kwaning and writer Maurits de Bruijn. Visitors will see an installation made of deformed steel cables that are intertwined into a kind of fence. They will hear spoken words about the political relations between Israel and Palestine, about connection and fragmentation, and about the role fences play in this.
4Siblings Collective (established 2018)
4Siblings is a queer eco-feminist art and research collective. Especially for Refresh Amsterdam #3, 4Siblings researched potential future heirloom seeds of Amsterdam. They befriended and spoke with artists, farmers, and gardeners and asked them to share stories about their favorite seeds. These stories are presented through a colorful collection of runner beans, sunflower seeds, and corn kernels. Together the anecdotes and images tell a science fiction story about the future use of Amsterdam’s seeds.
Solo exhibition Raquel van Haver: The Collateral Kin
As part of the 750th anniversary of the city of Amsterdam three years ago, the Amsterdam Museum asked visual artist Raquel van Haver (b. 1989, Colombia) and her studio to create new works for and about the city. The series consists of six large group portraits depicting 120 different Amsterdammers. The six installations are presented separately in the main hall of the exhibition Refresh Amsterdam #3: Imagine the Future.
“I was inspired by 17th-century group portraits from the Amsterdam Museum’s collection. Paintings known to visitors as works in which the elite often came together and showed their deeds with grand gestures. I am bringing these works into the present with The Collateral Kin,” Van Haver said. Van Haver’s portraits show people who Van Haver believes should be remembered in the future because they contribute to the city of Amsterdam. Van Haver portrays well-known and lesser-known social players, between the ages of 20 and 95, who have been active in a variety of fields over the past sixty years. From education, climate, housing and culture to social cohesion in the city. Her group portraits depict, for example, Hussein Suleiman (co-founder of Daily Paper), Chander Peroti a.k.a. Kiddo Cee (teacher and rapper from Southeast), Joost van Bellen (DJ) and Regina MacNack (founder of the Hoop van Morgen food bank foundation). Van Haver not only painted the people on canvas but also photographed them and archived each person’s story in collaboration with the City Archives Amsterdam.
“By interweaving and bundling the stories of the people of Amsterdam precisely in this way with its setting the museum, art historical and historical gives the stories more power in today’s time. And precisely because of this we can mirror our contemporary society and take it to ourselves,” Van Haver said. “This work is not only a celebration of and for the city but also a critical look at the handling forms in the city and the developments in its policies. It is 120 different voices that all in his, her or them way deal with the city, politics and its perils and dreams and show a clear picture as the mirror they hold up to their policies and administrators.”
With old veneer and painting techniques, van Haver bridges the present, past and future in which she takes a big step into the future with contemporary technology and innovative techniques, with a nod to the history of painting in the Netherlands. As a contemporary artist, she wants to use her art and the connecting factor in this project to give all these 120 faces and voices a place in the history is of Amsterdam. People who make our city, the city.
Studio Raquel van Haver consists of the following people: Raquel van Haver, Tim van Vliet, Anna Gawecka, Jazmon Voss, Alex Fischer, Victor Mari de Herder, Frank Hietbrink, Angel-Rose Oedit Doebé, Marian Genet and Kim Kleuskens.
