Great Exhibitions #9 – Scarlett Hooft Graafland: Mesmerizing

📅 Sunday, May 25th, 2025
🕒 Meet at 15:00 in front of Museum Panorama Mesdag, Den Haag

For the ninth edition of our Great Exhibitions series, we’re heading to Museum Panorama Mesdag in The Hague to discover the magical photography of Scarlett Hooft Graafland in her new exhibition, Mesmerizing.

Hooft Graafland works with analogue photography, blending technical mastery and boundless imagination to craft dreamlike scenes in the real world—without Photoshop. Whether it’s levitating bowler hats on a salt flat, a woman seemingly flying toward a plane over Ankara, or embroidered details that shimmer like fireworks, her photographs push the limits of what we think is possible. Think: Magritte, but lighter, more playful, and captured in a decisive instant.

Her surreal images are often staged in remote landscapes—salt deserts, the Arctic, vast mountain ranges—and always involve intense preparation and collaboration with local communities. Some works are witty, others poignant or quietly political, but all of them are unforgettable.

💡 Tip: Don’t just look—observe. Her images hide playful details and subtle textures that truly come alive when seen in person.

🍻 After the exhibition, we’ll head to Hoppzak, Den Haag’s finest craft beer bar. Expect a cozy, traditional wooden setting with a great selection of Dutch and international brews—perfect to wind down and chat about what we’ve just seen.