Closing the Vault
8 February 2025
10:00 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, 100 Amsterdam residents will carry the hundred city vases created by artist Navid Nuur to the Iron Chapel during a festive programme.
The old city vault of Amsterdam receives a new treasure
Over the past months, artist Navid Nuur has crafted one hundred vases in the Oude Kerk. He took them into the city, rolling them against facades, doors, bridges, and street furniture, imprinting the vases with literal impressions of Amsterdam. The glaze for the vases was sourced from various locations across the city, which is set to celebrate its 750th anniversary in 2025. Nuur combined these finds with minerals that Amsterdam residents have donated to the Oude Kerk in recent months. These include sand, glass bottles from cafés, ash from the waste plant, shells from the IJ, and even items like baby teeth and old bicycle locks. Nuur wanted to create the vases to make Amsterdam's soul tangible in a timeless everyday object. By using soil and glaze from the city, Navid Nuur, like a true alchemist, aims to imbue the vases with the energy of Amsterdam.
A hundred vases for a hundred years of art
Navid Nuur envisions the hundred vases as a catalyst for another hundred years of art in the Oude Kerk. The Iron Chapel, Amsterdam’s old city vault located in the city’s oldest building, historically safeguarded treasures such as the city’s birth certificate – the Toll Privilege. On 8 February, the chapel will regain its role, becoming home to a new treasure for Amsterdam. Over the next hundred years, the vases will be preserved in the chapel. Each year, on Amsterdam’s birthday, one city vase will be auctioned. Nuur hopes that the Oude Kerk will use the proceeds to support artists in creating new work in all their future forms, ensuring a century of creativity to come.
About the Exhibition
From 7 September 2024 to 9 February 2025/2125, the Oude Kerk will present a new large-scale, site-specific exhibition by Navid Nuur (Tehran, 1976 – lives and works in The Hague). Nuur invites visitors to experience the church through their senses. He peels back the layers of history of Amsterdam’s oldest building to reveal moments focused on the here and now: on seeing, smelling, hearing, earth, air, and light. At the same time, a significant part of the exhibition will only conclude a hundred years from now.
