Navid Nuur: When Doubt Turns into Destiny

The Oude Kerk presents a large-scale, context-specific exhibition by Navid Nuur that invites you to experience the church sensorially. Nuur peels back the history of Amsterdam’s oldest building, emphasising the here-and-now through experiences about seeing, smelling, hearing, earth, air, and light. Notably, an important part of the exhibition will only conclude one hundred years from now.

Alchemy and art

Navid Nuur is an artist who seeks meaning through an approach that oscillates between art and alchemy. He uses natural transformation processes of materials, influenced by light, darkness, or cold, to visualise immaterial phenomena – such as the flow of energy or the perception of time. In the Oude Kerk, Nuur’s works explore light, time, and space, visible and invisible phenomena, and physical and chemical principles. New and existing works converge in a moving interplay, encouraging us to take a sharper perspective on the world. A ray of sunlight occasionally reveals a streak in the heavens, an instrument periodically exhales a breath of air, and a field of pebbles crunches.

100 city vases (2125)

During the exhibition, Nuur creates a series of one hundred vases in and around the Oude Kerk. In a workshop, drying room, and grinding room, he mixes clay with raw materials and minerals from Amsterdam, making traces of the city visible in the vases. At the end of the exhibition, the vases will be stored in the Iron Chapel, which served as Amsterdam’s city vault for centuries. A vase will be auctioned each year, bringing When Doubt Turns into Destiny to completion a hundred years from now, in 2125, when all the vases will have left the church.