REMEMBER FOR TOMORROW

The Baltic Sea viewed as a space for dialogue through artistic forms of expression.

Nine countries share its coastline: Denmark, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia.

A complex system – shaped by an eventful history from the earliest human settlements around 12,000 years ago to the conflict-ridden and threatened present.

The Baltic Sea region, unique in terms of its distinctive landscape, linguistic diversity and cultural richness, has always been a place of longing for artists.

Through the concentration of diversity and the formation of an inevitable coexistence, the questions of

WHAT was? WHAT is? WHAT will be? WHY?

REMEMBER for TOMORROW. WHY?

We need the art of understanding and communication, of LISTENING with respect for one another. Reinforced by the current situation, more and more questions are being asked – by all generations.

Why did this happen? What were the causes?

In the search for answers, we must look not only at what is directly visible, at the horizon, but also at what lies behind it, what could be there.

This art project provides a space for an open exchange of ideas, for remembrance. And that makes it possible to ask questions about yesterday with an eye to tomorrow. Memories are essential to our IDENTITY.

Time is rewriting itself – today we talk of war, of imminent threats.
This awakens memories and at the same time calls for us to take a stand, to act – to use art to show ways out of the crisis. The art project REMEMBER for TOMORROW shows us this way.

TOGETHER in DIALOGUE
What will become, what will be, what will change?
What do we know about each other?
What do we want to know, to learn?
What do we accept: that which is foreign to us? Even that which is foreign within ourselves?
Dialogue between generations
Dialogue with people from different backgrounds
Dialogue with people from different social contexts
Dialogue between artists
Dialogue between art and viewer

MEMORIES
What do we want to remember?
What can we remember?
What hurts? What is traumatic?
What strengthens us?
Talk or remain silent – conceal?
Memories are like journeys through time – journeys of the mind
What does the LOSS of memory mean?

MEMORIES
Preserve them?
Suppress them?
Sweep them under the carpet?
Lock them away behind doors, forever?
Paint them in a favourable light? Talk them up?
Erase them?
Manipulate them?

Memories are not reality – they are individual experiences and perceptions. Sometimes there are different memories and perspectives on the same situation or the same person.

Individual experiences culminate in a picture of life.

Memories are important building blocks for our IDENTITY.

Thinking about time:
What if we had no memories?

Thinking differently about time:
The future has already been – it lies behind us – ahead of us lies the past, and from this we could develop new visions.

Time changes how we evaluate memories – in retrospect, negative details fade away, experiences.

For some, it seems better to live with the feeling of the past than to look towards an uncertain future. 'Everything used to be better' – the good old days!

EVIDENCE of memory
What do people take with them? What is important to them when they have to decide in a matter of seconds to leave their place, their flat, their home?

It's always PHOTOS – even if it's just one!

What does that mean today? In the digital age and with AI? Where does the past become visible in relation to REMEMBER for TOMORROW?

Amber is like a time capsule – Baltic amber contains 40 to 50 million years of history.

Trees store the memories of nature – these can be read in the annual rings.

What lies dormant at the bottom of the Baltic Sea? What if this suddenly became visible, leaving the Baltic Sea as nothing more than a dried-up area?

An atlas of contemporary history would open up... and a safari through thousands of years would become conceivable.

What evidence of yesterday or the day before yesterday can be found in our immediate surroundings?

What NEW things are emerging on ground that has been there for a long time, bearing the traces of time?

What stories do old walls tell, now that they are to support a new house?

What does nature tell us? What do trees and plants tell us? What does the sound of the sea bring to us on the coast?

It is a field of observation and research around us on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

Today it is snowing. Everything around me is covered in white, and I see the bare branches of the trees as a pattern of white lines against a solid grey sky. Snowflakes land on the window pane, and I look out through an ornament of snowflakes. Everything is different from yesterday, before the snow. It is enchanted and changed, yet familiar.

And that is how I want to see and reveal more than what we know by name.

I call the exhibition FROM THE VOID. It is a series of paintings and drawings that have been created over the past year. Many of the works were created during a residence at the Danish Institute in Rome in the summer of 2025. I studied Baroque painting and architecture because Baroque painting breaks with perspective and space and creates floating, swelling visual universes where up and down, foreground and background do not exist. It is as if the Baroque images are outside the given, in an interspace or a void between earth and sky. A void that opens up to something else and more.

In my watercolours and paintings, I strive to rediscover my impressions in an abstract expression. These are not interpretations or representations of what we can name, but rather an attempt to be present in what is not entirely known, what speaks to each of us from a place within ourselves that is more than what is accepted.

Perhaps like the snow on the branches. Enchanted and changed, yet familiar."

Ida Ferdinand, 26.01.2026