Festive storage of artist Navid Nuur’s 100 Amsterdam vases at the IJzeren Kapel.
On Saturday 8 February, 100 Amsterdammers will bring artist Navid Nuur’s 100 city vases to the IJzeren Kapel during a festive programme.
Program
10 a.m.: first vase by district council chair Amélie Strens and director Lotte Terwel
11 a.m. – 4 p.m.: music by Jasmim Mandillo (cello); Galit Zadok (baroque flute, bassoon) & Punto Bawono (lute, baroque guitar); Marc Alberto (saxophone)
4:45 p.m.: art historian Cathelijne Blok addresses a column
5 p.m.: second to last vase by children’s mayor Rüya
17.15: drinks and take a look at the Iron Chapel
5:45 p.m.: last vase by Navid Nuur (close the Iron Chapel)
* With a valid ticket for the Oude Kerk, the programme is free to enter.
Amsterdam’s old city vault gets a new treasure
Artist Navid Nuur made a hundred vases in the Oude Kerk in recent months. He took them into the city and rolled them against facades, doors, bridges and street furniture. In this way, he provided the vases with literal impressions of the city. He collected the vases’ glaze from all over Amsterdam, the city that will celebrate its 750th anniversary in 2025. He mixed what he found with minerals handed in by Amsterdammers to the Oude Kerk in recent months. Think sand, bottle glass from cafés, ashes from the waste power plant, shells from the IJ, but also milk teeth and old bicycle locks. Nuur wanted to make the vases because he wanted to make the soul of Amsterdam tangible in an ancient utensil. By using soil and glaze from the city, Navid Nuur wants to charge the vases with Amsterdam energy like a true alchemist.
One hundred vases for one hundred years of art
Navid Nuur sees the hundred vases as the engine for another hundred years of art in the Oude Kerk. The Iron Chapel is Amsterdam’s old city vault in the oldest building in Amsterdam. For centuries, among other things, the city’s birth certificate – the Tolprivilege – was safely stored there. On 8 February, the chapel will regain its function and be filled with a new treasure for Amsterdam. For the next hundred years, the vases will be kept in the chapel. Every year, a city vase from the chapel will be auctioned on Amsterdam’s birthday. Nuur wants the Oude Kerk to use the proceeds to allow artists in all their future manifestations to create new work over the next hundred years.
750 years of Amsterdam
Navid Nuurs’ project NN XXX ties in with Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary celebrations. Starting in 2025, one vase will be auctioned every year on 27 October (Amsterdam’s birthday). In 2125, exactly one hundred years later, the last vase will leave the chapel and When Doubt Turns into Destiny will be complete.
About the exhibition
From 7 September 2024 to 9 February 2025/2125, the Oude Kerk presents a new large-scale context-specific exhibition by Navid Nuur (Tehran, 1976 – lives and works in The Hague). Nuur invites you to experience the church sensorially. He peels off the history of Amsterdam’s oldest building into experiences that are about the here and now: about seeing, smelling, hearing, earth, air and light. At the same time, an important part of the exhibition comes to an end only a hundred years from now.
