News 14th of November 2025

Estafette reflects on the intimate bond that different generations can form with a place. The exhibition invites you into the personal narrative of the impending loss of the athletics club AV Atos, seen through the eyes of Lucas Huikeshoven’s father and grandfather. For club members and local residents, the former running track and the Elzenhagen sports park were not merely “facilities,” but sites of memory, of community, of home, and of nature.

Yet where the sports associations saw a home, the municipality saw a blank canvas: a site with space for the Noord/Zuidlijn metro, trendy hospitality, urban redevelopment, demolition, and expensive new construction — for a new kind of northerner. The entire sports park, including 2,150 trees, was therefore cleared to make way for what are described as “urban villas” in “the garden of the city.”

Estafette is a stoic act of resistance — an effort of documentation and archiving of collective action and memory against the displacement of the communities of Amsterdam-Noord that existed long before the neighborhood became hip.

Opening

Friday 21 November

19.00 - 21.00

Exhibition

22-30 November

Saturday & Sunday

14:00 - 17:00

And by appointment

The past month my work Estafette was part of an exhibition organized by the local independent archive Historic Center Amsterdam Noord, HCAN. The show was organized around the subject of the growth of Amsterdam Noord. Aside from historic presentation of the archive and my work, Sigrid van Essel showed paintings.

During the show I had valualbel days with dedicated presentations for the comunity of the altethics track, friends and people from the neigbourhood and local grassroots organisation, Verdedig Noord, that I am part of. They also left memories in the family album that is part of the work.