Closing the Vault: Vase Ceremony
8 February 2025
9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Festive placement of Navid Nuur’s 100 city vases in the Iron Chapel.
With a valid admission ticket to the Oude Kerk, the programme is freely accessible.
On Saturday, 8 February 2025, one hundred Amsterdam residents will deliver the hundred city vases created by artist Navid Nuur to the former city lavatory (the Iron Chapel) in the Oude Kerk during a festive programme. From 10:00 onwards, well-known and lesser-known Amsterdammers, local residents, and other participants will take turns carrying a crate containing a vase upstairs.
One hundred vases with the soul of Amsterdam
Over the past months, artist Navid Nuur crafted one hundred vases in the Oude Kerk. He then took them into the city, rolling them against facades, doors, bridges, and street furniture, imprinting the vases with literal impressions of the city. The glaze for the vases was collected from across Amsterdam, which is celebrating its 750th anniversary in 2025. A selection of the materials he used includes shells from the IJ, glass from cafés, charcoal from a kebab shop, ash from a pizzeria, and silt from the canals. In this way, he imbued this universal and age-old object with the soul of Amsterdam.
One hundred vases for one hundred years of art
Navid Nuur sees the hundred vases as a catalyst for another hundred years of art in the Oude Kerk. The Iron Chapel, Amsterdam’s old city vault, is located in the city’s oldest building. For centuries, it safeguarded treasures such as the city’s birth certificate – the Toll Privilege. On 8 February, the chapel will regain its purpose and be filled with a new treasure for Amsterdam. Over the next hundred years, the vases will be preserved in the chapel. Each year, one city vase will be auctioned on Amsterdam’s birthday. Nuur hopes that the Oude Kerk will use the proceeds to support artists in all their future forms, enabling the creation of new works over the next hundred years.
750 Years of Amsterdam
Navid Nuur’s project NN XXX ties into the celebration of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary. Starting in 2025, one vase will be auctioned every year on 27 October, Amsterdam’s birthday. In 2125, exactly one hundred years later, the final vase will leave the chapel, marking the completion of When Doubt Turns into Destiny.
About the exhibition
From 7 September 2024 to 9 February 2025, the Oude Kerk will present a large-scale, context-specific exhibition by Navid Nuur (Tehran, 1976 – lives and works in The Hague). Nuur invites visitors to experience the church through the senses. He peels back the history of Amsterdam’s oldest building to reveal experiences rooted in the here and now: focusing on sight, smell, sound, earth, air, and light.
