4 April – 23 August 2026
In Flowers in the Mirror, photographer and curator Ruben Lundgren (Netherlands, 1983) reflects on twenty years of living and working in China, which he first visited at twenty-one as a photography student. Learning Mandarin and acquainting himself with the culture coincided with his search for an openly queer identity. Photography offers him the opportunity to explore the tension between image and reality.
Lundgren constantly experiments with different photographic styles, without losing his own vision, intuition and sense of wonder. This exhibition brings together his most important projects created in China, including Empty Bottles, Real Dreams and Wow Taobao. By connecting the personal with the social, Lundgren opens up new perspectives on how we see China.
Exhibition
The exhibition’s title, Flowers in the Mirror, comes from an old Chinese saying that describes dreams, mirages or anything that appears real but is actually an illusion. It is emblematic of China, where much seems to be happening behind a facade. This has created a rather one-sided image of China in the Netherlands, an image shaped by stories about autocracy and censorship. Lundgren succeeds in introducing a nuanced vision into his work within this complex and politically charged arena.
One of the first projects that Lundgren worked on in China, together with photographer Thijs Groot Wassink, was Empty Bottles (2007). The series shows people picking up plastic bottles to take to recycling points. The photographers placed the bottles on the ground themselves and waited until someone picked them up. The project explores the tension between the value of the individual and the rapid urban development in Beijing and Shanghai. It also questions the conventions of documentary photography by actively intervening in reality, something that is usually considered taboo.
In China, Lundgren became fascinated by anonymous consumer photography. In Wow Taobao (2020) he selected existing images from a Chinese e-commerce website and placed them in a new context, paying tribute to this commercial genre while providing a humorous commentary on overconsumption. In addition to his independent projects, Lundgren regularly took photographs for newspapers such as De Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad and The Guardian, allowing him to travel to emerging cities and rural China, using his camera as a passport to witness unique events. These experiences gave him an even broader insight into Chinese society and taught him how journalism plays a direct role in how outsiders perceive the country. A selection of these images was collected in the book Real Dreams (2021).
These and other series are featured in Flowers in the Mirror, which is emphatically not a classic retrospective exhibition. By showcasing vernacular photography alongside his artistic work, Lundgren invites the viewer to reflect on the reliability of images, the construction of reality and how strongly images influence our view of the world. The exhibition has been curated by Lundgren in close collaboration with curator Iris Sikking and Chinese independent curator Yining He.
Publication
The exhibition coincides with the publication of Flowers in the Mirror: A Reader in which, as in the exhibition, Lundgren reflects on over twenty years of living and working in China. Lundgren layers photographic series, archival materials and diary fragments to present the reader with a kaleidoscopic view of China, his personal development as a photographer and a reflection on the medium of photography itself. Designed by Rob van Hoesel and published by the Eriskay Connection, the book will be available in the museum shop from 4 April for €42.00.
The exhibition has been made possible with the support of:
Note for editors
For more information, extra press images and interview requests:
Annemarie van den Eijkel | +31 642 216 272 | avandeneijkel@fmdh.nl
