Culture has never been static. 

Like nature, it flows, transforms, and grows.

Flowing Forms explores how contemporary glass art reflects the fluid and living nature of culture. The exhibition takes place in the wallpaper rooms of Landhuis Oud Amelisweerd, alongside Europe’s best-preserved collection of Chinese hand-painted wallpapers from the Qing Dynasty, an exceptional testament to centuries of cultural exchange. The exhibition reveals how images, craft techniques, and ideas continuously travel through time and space. Glass itself, fragile yet enduring, becomes a perfect metaphor for migration, renewal, and the connections between tradition, nature, and our shifting sense of belonging.

Taking this historical resonance as its point of departure, Flowing Forms investigates how contemporary glass art embodies the same sense of movement, vulnerability, and ongoing transformation. Once molten and glowing hot, now solid yet endlessly reshapeable, glass carries within it the story of how materials and meanings migrate across time and space. From ancient beads and stained-glass windows to experimental sculptures and site-specific installations, glass reflects a world in constant motion.

The sixteen Dutch and international artists employ a wide range of traditional and innovative techniques, including glassblowing, kiln casting, fusing, coldworking (cutting, engraving, sandblasting), lamination, and light projection. Many works incorporate natural elements and references to the cultural heritage of the estate, creating layered dialogues between interior and exterior, nature and culture, past and present.

Within the historic rooms where Chinese hand-painted wallpapers meet Dutch architectural heritage, these glass artworks open new conversations about identity, memory, and the tension between local traditions and global exchange. They invite us to reflect on the fragile balance between what we choose to preserve and how culture — like nature itself — continues to grow, transform, and renew itself.

Visitors are invited to wander freely through the spaces, follow the play of light across glass surfaces, and experience how the works respond to the atmosphere of the house and the surrounding landscape. In this way, Flowing Forms reminds us that culture, like nature, survives through flow, collision, and regeneration — a fragile yet continuously transforming process in which the forces that connect us never come to a standstill.