Where We Were
Groupshow
19.09 - 08.11.2025
From 19 September to 8 November 2025, Ballon Rouge presents work by Vivian Ammerlaan, Marlike Marks, Marc Nolte, Sanne Romeijn, Jet Siemons, and Dineke Versluis. Where We Were brings together works in which landscape is approached not as a backdrop, but as something living, meaningful, and in motion. The exhibition also marks the opening exhibition of Ballon Rouge’s new space.
Through photography, collage, and installation, the artists explore landscape as a site of memory, imagination, and encounter. The works move between inner and outer worlds, between observation and projection, revealing how places shape us and how we, in turn, give meaning to place.
Manu and Eva, 2022
© Sanne Romeijn
Oerbergen 8, 2025
© Vivian Ammerlaan
In Oerbergen, Vivian Ammerlaan presents collages of nameless mountain forms that refer to an origin preceding meaning. The work emerged from an exercise in slowness and attention — looking without purpose and thinking with her hands. In the final phase, the images began to organize themselves, as if remembering where they came from. The backs of the works reveal traces of the process: colors, tears, notes. Together, they form quiet witnesses to the layered and searching path that led to the images.
In her ongoing series Sunflower Lane, Marlike Marks photographs the garden she tends with her friends, a quiet refuge at the edge of the city. Within this intimate space, human presence and nature merge. By focusing on subtle details; skin catching light, the texture of a leaf, the images reveal the slow rhythms of growth, closeness, and time passing.
Battle Ground, USA, 2024
© Marc Nolte
In Battle Ground, USA Marc Nolte confronts the quiet streets and expansive fields of America with a shifted perspective on a familiar country. The project examines how traditional values and underlying tensions coexist in places that appear pristine, yet carry an unspoken unease. Each image reveals a layered reality, balancing nostalgia and unrest, beauty and threat. With Battle Ground, Nolte questions the image of America and the stories that lie beneath its surface.
Sanne Romeijn explores identity and connection through her travels. Her project Under the Same Sun follows millennials navigating meaning in a changing world. The series combines portraits and landscapes gathered intuitively across locations, from deserted sites in the deep South of America to a small 1920s apartment in Vienna. The journey serves both as a physical route and a metaphor for her generation’s hopes and uncertainties, while also reflecting Romeijn’s own perspective within it.
Necklace, 2025
© Marlike Marks
Stories and legends embedded in the Dutch landscape shape Jet Siemons imagination. Het Witte Wieven Archief is a personal exploration of the ghostly women said to inhabit mist and hills in old folklore. The project examines how memory, mystery, and folklore persist in the present. Through photographs, texts, and collected objects, the project explores the tension between belief and doubt, between the desire to prove and the need to protect what remains unexplained.
In Connecting Landscapes, Dineke Versluis investigates how landscapes are linked across borders, visually, geographically, and culturally. By combining images from different countries and regions, she creates works that initially appear cohesive, yet reveal themselves as assemblages of fragments from multiple worlds. The photographs are not simply placed side by side, but associatively connected to form new narratives. Throughout the exhibition, the works are continually rearranged, allowing shifting relationships and perspectives to emerge.
Lochemsebos, 2025
© Jet Siemons
◼︎ Throwback
◼︎ Credits
Curated by participating artists
Cover image © Sanne Romeijn