Rising Tide

The future human cost of rising sea levels will be dramatic. Rising Tide is a travelling exhibition, showing work by renowned Dutch photographer Kadir van Lohuizen on the human consequences of the rising sea levels. Bring the eye-opening exhibition Rising Tide by Kadir van Lohuizen, produced by the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, to your audience.

Retreating glaciers, melting ice sheets and global warming are all contributing to the expansion of sea water, causing coastal erosion, inundation, loss of fresh drinking water, and frequent coastal surges. As a result, people have to flee their homes. The entire population of Kiribati will have to relocate. In Bangladesh, tens of millions of people will need to move from the delta by 2050. Closer to home, the east coast of the USA is experiencing a sea level rise much higher than the global average. Major centres such as the Miami Beach area may have to be evacuated by 2060. Worldwide, massive numbers of people will have to flee coastal regions. And nobody knows where they will go.

Award winning photographer Kadir van Lohuizen has covered conflicts and injustices all over the world, ranging from migration, waste management, the diamond industry and food production, to one of the major issues the world is facing today: rising sea levels.

Kadir van Lohuizen

JAKARTA - Pluit in northern Jakarta remains vulnerable to sea level rise after a master plan for a giant sea wall was shelved. The plan instead is to move the entire city, but it remains unclear if just the government will move.

Kadir van Lohuizen

KIRABITI - Children play on the beach, where sandbags have been placed to try hold back the ocean at Temwaiku, a vulnerable village on South Tarawa, Kiribati.

Kadir van Lohuizen

USA - A king tide at Miami Beach, in which water in the street comes over the poorly maintained seawall at Indian Creek and up through the drainage system.

Kadir van Lohuizen

PANAMA - Norberto Hernandez and his wife, Olga, have been exiled to the island of Sucunguadup, which they heightened themselves using coral.

Image: Stanley Greene / NOOR

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"While some countries have proved adept at adopting forward-thinking policies, including relocation strategies, many are refusing to acknowledge rising sea levels as anything more than a regional issue. Van Lohuizen’s work starkly points out the intimate connection between civilization and the sea, challenging the viewer to think more critically about the future." - Buzzfeed

Rising Tide is a travelling exhibition, showing the human consequences of the rising sea levels. The exhibition goes beyond the depiction of one of the world’s biggest challenges to date, it is also a testament to human’s resiliency. The comprehensive exhibition includes video and photography, featuring regions and its inhabitants as they are battling against the rising tide, combined with factual information based on scientific research. Rising Tide provides vivid visual documentation of how the climate crisis already affecting places where people live: Greenland with its melting glaciers, Kiribati, Fiji, the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, the Guna Yala archipelago in Panama, Jakarta, the Marshall Islands, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. While the exhibition presents a global perspective of the climate crisis, every location where it is presented adds a piece to the developing storyline: by zooming in on the local threats and consequences of the rising sea level, and by unearthing what action is (and isn’t!) being taken on a local level to prevent and regulate the rising tides. Previous locations include a.o. Amsterdam (NL) and New York (US).

Education opportunities

The exhibition Rising Tide has a high educational value, sharing an important story in an immersive, illustrative, comprehensive and to-the-point manner. The exhibition invites the viewers to engage with the spatial and interactive experience and consider their own relationship to the topic. It also provides ample opportunities to create education programs for Middle and High School students and College and University students alike, as well as public programming. Per location, we work together with local and global activists, scientists, media and politics from our vast network to create an engaging side program with talks, panels and other events.

Partners

The exhibition is developed by the Maritime Museum Amsterdam and NOOR Images and is an essential part of the Maritime Museum’s mission statement: Water connects worlds. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity for an exchange with our extended network to encourage, strengthen and celebrate cultural, diplomatic and economic relations. The book “After Us The Deluge” by Kadir van Lohuizen, published by NOOR and Lannoo Publishers, accompanies the exhibition and provides additional essays with firsthand reflections from scientists and activists from all over the world. Van Lohuizen also presented a four part series about the human consequences of rising sea levels for NTR under the same title.

Traveling exhibition

Are you interested in presenting Rising Tide in your institution? We offer a toolkit consisting of a fully designed exhibition that is flexible, adaptable to any space and can be produced locally.

The toolkit consists of:

Image panels, text panels, and videos (downloads)
A DIY wall to add your local/regional perspective to the exhibition: whether it is with local data and imagery, audience generated content, activist calls for action or the work of a local artist with thematic links to the exhibition
Instructions for build and production including suggestions for sustainability for the exhibition itself and for your building and campus for the duration of the exhibition
Marketing handbook: concept press release, marketing tips and tools, images and texts
Education handbook: suggestions for maximizing impact through public and school programs

Technical information:

The exhibition is designed for a space between 100-400 m2 /(1075 - 4305 ft2 (a kit for larger spaces is available on request)
The exhibition consists of 40-60 images, 4-8 videos and texts including scientific research and infographics

The exhibition fee for the toolkit (concept development, artist fee) is €25.000.
This excludes all costs for production/installment/staff for the realization of the exhibition at your institution.

Do you prefer a custom design for your space? We can accommodate you as well.