From 7 September 2024 to 9 February 2025/2125, the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam presents a unique exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Navid Nuur (Tehran, 1976). When Doubt Turns into Destiny is Nuur’s first large-scale intervention outside a museum setting. He strips away the history of Amsterdam’s oldest building to reveal sensory experiences focused on the here and now. Additionally, a key part of the exhibition will only conclude in 2125, inviting visitors to engage with time in a profound way.
Navid Nuur is an artist who explores meaning through an approach that bridges 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. A ray of sunlight occasionally reveals a streak in the rafters, a device intermittently exhales a gust of air, and a field of pebbles audibly crunches underfoot.
100 vases for the future
The title of Nuur’s exhibition reflects on doubt, uncertainty, and the unknown as catalysts for change. He views the world as constantly changing, always on the brink of transformation. This outlook also leads him to contemplate the place of humans in the world. In the Oude Kerk, he leaves a message for people living a hundred years from now. During the exhibition, he mixes clay with raw materials and minerals from all parts of Amsterdam, which celebrates its 750th anniversary in 2025. The artist will frequently work at the Oude Kerk during the exhibition, allowing the hundred vessels to come into being before the public’s eyes. After the exhibition, the vases will be stored in the IJzeren Kapel (Iron Chapel), which for centuries was Amsterdam’s city vault. From 2025, the IJzeren Kapel will function as a vault again, this time for Nuur’s vases. Each year, a vase – or, as Nuur says, a ‘treasure’ – is given to a recipient in exchange for a financial donation to the Oude Kerk. When Doubt Turns into Destiny will be complete a hundred years from now, in 2125, when all the vases will have left the church.
Press release from Oude Kerk Amsterdam
Image: Navid Nuur. Installation view of When Doubt Turns into Destiny at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam. 2024. Photography by Aad Hoogendoorn. Image courtesy of Oude Kerk, Amsterdam
