To Touch The Sun is a group exhibition that invites audiences to take a critical look at a pressing crisis: the complex and layered spatial challenges currently facing the Netherlands. Fifteen works make up the exhibition – each taking this crisis as the starting point. The first year students of the MA Photography and Society at KABK, in conversation with the Dutch journalistic platform De Correspondent, invite you to join our exhibition from the 9th to the 14th of June 2025. It will take place at Paradise, a new gallery located in the Hague, Groenewgje 136. This crisis centers around competing — and often conflicting — priorities, including housing, energy transition, water management, recreation, economic development, public health, nature conservation, and biodiversity. While these tensions may remain largely invisible to the broader public, their urgenc is becoming increasingly undeniable. Through varied visual languages and artistic strategies, the participating artists explore and interrogate these unseen pressures. The works reflect on the multiple dimensions of the crisis, offering alternative perspectives, subtle provocations, and space for dialogue. Our collective work invites viewers to engage with the critical questions shaping the physical, social, and political landscapes of the Netherlands today — and to consider what role art can play in illuminating the unseen. To Touch The Sun will feature a range of photographic, video, artistic works and installations by fifteen international image-makers from eleven countries including: Alberto Vidal Bernedo, Elena Krukonyte, Eva Chapkin, Fenna Jensma, Joanna Demarco, Julie de Ruijter, Khalil Döring, Mirko Pirisi, Marta Karkosa, Matteo Montaldo, Nadia Sheikh, Nikos Kapetanios, Odysseas Tsompanoglou, Raisa Durandi and Sara Ito. Photography & Society is a two-year master’s programme at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. The programme educates socially engaged photographers of the 21st century, who possess an active interest in the technological, political, environmental and social role of the photograph. This project is an outcome of the MAPS1 Studio3 unit guided by Andrea Stultiens, Josta van Boxmeer, Bebe Agterberg, Jonathan Tang, Theo Baart, Dirk-Jan Visser, Jana Romanova and Ola Lanko.
Details:
Opening day: 9th June, Monday Working hours: Week days:
18:00-22:00
11:00-20:00
Saturday:
14:00-20:00
Public events: Games night 12th June, Thursday 18:00 –22:00 Lunch and tour 14th June, Saturday 13:00 - 15:00