PRESS RELEASE

Alongside many highlights from her existing work, new work is being shown too, including, ‘Farewell my Freeman Friend’, which Hooft Graafland made especially for this exhibition. This image of a white ball slowly drifting away in a canoe in the Indian Ocean, to the west of Madagascar, is enriched with embroidery and is illuminated by a dynamic moving light – something new. 'I really tried to take a new step in my work with this. By adding this dimension, even more movement is created in the work. It is as if a magic wand is being waved over it', says Hooft Graafland.

The exhibition also features a recent series of photos taken in Turkey of people apparently floating in the sky. In this series Hooft Graafland worked with a permanent team of circus people and a trampoline. ‘It looks like an everyday event, a man who lies relaxed above the horizon, but when you know that this pose was executed during a staggeringly difficult leap into the sky, you look at it quite differently. The image puts reality on edge’, says Adrienne Quarles van Ufford, Head of Museum Affairs at Museum Panorama Mesdag, and curator of the exhibition.

Hooft Graafland seeks the power of the landscape and manages to capture the magnificence of the vast areas of nature in the same way that Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831-1915) did with his iconic Panorama of Scheveningen. With a subtle mix of humour and wonder, she addresses social themes such as climate change, inequality and the position of women, which means her work always remains hopeful and inspiring. Museum Director Minke Schat: ‘Scarlett Hooft Graafland travels light, but her images carry weight. Like the work by the Mesdags, Hooft Garland’s art invites us to reflect– not only about ourselves and our connection with nature, but also about social issues. This is in line with museum’s mission to offer new viewpoints. And that may cause controversy’.

Scarlett Hooft Graafland takes analogue photos, without adding digital trickery. ‘For me it’s about reality’, says Hooft Graafland, ‘and the magical effect that can come from that. This is why I still use an analogue camera. I love it that photos capture the natural moment as the pure recording of a situation'.

There is a special wall in the exhibition on which visitors can write something, write poetry or make a drawing on a photo card dedicated to the person in the photo. The cards bring new stories together on the wall, so new ideas, thoughts and interpretations are ‘captured’. At the same time the museum wants this to stimulate a dialogue between visitors. After the exhibition closes the museum will be publishing a compilation of the collected stories.

In a short film, to be shown in the exhibition, Hooft Graafland is being interviewed in her Amsterdam studio about her work and her approach. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication of the same name–Scarlett Hooft Graafland: Mesmerizing. The authors are Adrienne Quarles van Ufford, Scarlett Hooft Graafland and Cathelijne Blok. Published by Uitgeverij Waanders. Price €25.00.

Scarlett Hooft Graafland studied at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and at the Parsons School of Design in New York. She trained as a sculptor and began to photograph to capture her installations. Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s work is included in museum collections such as those of Fotografiska, Stockholm, Huis Marseille Museum, Amsterdam, Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, CAMP Contemporary Art Museum of Palestine, Jerusalem, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, and in the collections of the Amsterdam UMC, the Dutch embassies in Dubai and Brussel, De Nederlandse Bank, the New York Public Library Collection, UBS Zurich, Statoil, Stavanger and FNAC, Paris.

Scarlett Hooft Graafland: Mesmerizing is on show from 29 March - 31 August 2025.

 

Museum Panorama Mesdag is an icon in The Hague – and the Panorama of Scheveningen is its undisputed crown jewel. In addition to the largest painting in the Netherlands, the museum also has an impressive collection of other works by artists (and married couple) Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten on display. This, plus a rotating array of temporary exhibitions that forge connections between past and present mean there is always something new to see.

For questions from the press, interviews, film or image material, please contact Caroline Rijks, PR, Marketing & Communication, email: crijks@panorama-mesdag.nl or phone: +31(0)6-412 53 816.

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