ruins. sense of place

At the Iona House on the Herengracht, you encounter the work of several artists who lived in Iona House and/or work with Iona Foundation.

For this Amsterdam Art Week artist Nataliya Zuban, who lived at Iona House during her residency program at Rijksakademie (2023-2025), is invited to present works from the series Ruins. Sense of Place. Rudolf Steiner’s ideas about transformation, metamorphosis and the relationship between matter and human experience offer an interesting perspective on Zuban’s practice. Her work explores how forms change over time, break down, and transform through processes of destruction. A ruin is not only a record of what has been lost, but also a state of transition, where a previous form has disappeared but the material continues to exist and change.

For the presentation at Iona Stichting, Zuban shows works from the series ruins. sense of place, which explore these processes through ceramic, movement, and time.

You also meet the monumental artwork Guernica de la Ecologia created by artist Claudy Jongstra. You can experience large-scale temporary murals and paintings by Gijs Frieling. The sculptures of artist Molly Palmer welcome and illuminate everyone who enters the communal hall of the Iona House.

Women’s lives and nature were important themes in the work of artist Ernée ‘t Hooft. She became known primarily for her tapestries, depicting figures and narrative scenes using various embroidery techniques with limited use of applications. Together with her husband, architect Jan van der Linden (1907-1993), they decided to establish the Iona Foundation in 1966, which would be entirely dedicated to the development of a free cultural life.