The Amsterdams Fund for the Arts (AFK) announced the nominees for the Amsterdam Art Award 2022. The artwork ‘Black Water’ by RAAAF is nominated in the category “Work of the Year”.

With the installation Black Water, RAAAF once again points to the unique hidden qualities and potential of 10.000 vacant public buildings in the Netherlands, presented in the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2010.

A hidden space in one of Amsterdam’s main public works, to which all inhabitants contributed for decades by visiting their toilets. Black Water embodies the origins of Amsterdam’s new urban neighborhood Zeeburgereiland. The three sewage treatment silos have been standing around in a desolate atmosphere for decades. Our intervention emphasizes forgotten qualities in our contemporary cities. Black Water lets you enter darkness, silence and absence. Contrasting strongly with the yough neighborhood that surrounds the silo nowadays.

Earlier Dutch newspaper NRC listed Black Water among the best artworks of 2021 internationally.