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In her first solo exhibition in Germany, Dutch photographer Sarah van Rij (1990) will present her exhibition ‘In the Sound of Shadows’ in the auditorium of the Halle für aktuelle Kunst, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, from 31 October 2025 to 4 January 2026. On display are more than twenty works, some of them large-format, from the past seven years, revealing van Rij’s keen eye for detail and her ability to capture the poetic beauty of everyday life in fragmentary, timeless compositions.
Van Rij playfully transcends the documentary role of photography and transforms the visible into dreamlike, surreal compositions. Disembodied hands, martini glasses and abandoned high heels appear as fleeting echoes. Fragmented figures merge with the contours of floral arrangements to create suggestive, symbolic images. Deeply anchored in the collective memory, they cast their long shadows into the exhibition space.
Whether captured with an iPhone or a camera, everyday life in van Rijs’ work becomes a cinematic stage of overlooked traces and gestures. Reflections in windows or on water surfaces create a melancholic, cinematic mood in which suggestive, fragmentary narratives unfold. The artist herself also becomes part of these compositions. Appearing in shadows or veiled reflections, she repeatedly breaks through the distance between viewer and image. Observation, deconstruction and reconstruction characterise her artistic process, a …
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Img. above: Sarah van Rij, Self-portrait, 2022, San Francisco © Sarah van Rij
