In honor of 750 years of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Museum presents the third edition of Refresh Amsterdam: a large-scale art event exploring current themes in the city and society. The exhibition features artworks by fifteen contemporary artists and an impressive solo exhibition by Raquel van Haver.
'Refresh Amsterdam #3 - Imagine the Future' fills the Amsterdam Museum with work that detaches the city from the now. This Refresh edition is extra meaningful: it is the last major exhibition at the location in aan de Amstel. After this, Amsterdam Museum will move back to the Kalverstraat.
The open invitation is striking: not only artists, but also the public was given a platform to share images of the future. The result is a kaleidoscope of perspectives; installations, photography, video and words merge into a city portrait that you don't read linearly.
The power is in the friction. You see dreams next to concerns, progress next to preservation. As such, Refresh is not a showpiece but a conversation: what do we want to live together, what does the city look like if we dare to redraw it? In tours and public programs it sinks from image to conversation, so that for a moment the museum behaves as a city forum.
"Refresh shows that the city is not a finished product but a sentence we complete together."
Raquel van Haver
Raquel van Haver is a painter and uses photography in her work. She was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and currently lives and works in Amsterdam. Van Haver's paintings provide an insight into everyday life. Her work focuses on themes of ethnicity and identity, drawing inspiration from African, Western, Caribbean and Latin American cultures within the diaspora. In her paintings, she interweaves references to the past, present and future. The paintings are found to be raw and masculine, monumental and energetic, or dark and ominous.
For Amsterdammers, this feels close: you recognize streets, voices, rhythms. Yet it opens your eyes, because imagination always dares to take a step further than nostalgia. You walk out with the pleasant unease that "future" is not something you wait for - but experience.