Building ‘The Womb’, an Art Icon for Inter-Civilizations Dialogue
Liverpool, Planet Art eXchange will launch the first of its events in the beginning of July 2008.
Dubbed ‘The Womb’, the project is a monumental installation designed by a renown designer and will be created by artists over 4 years’ period, it will explore the birth of our consciousness and the rise of our differentiations. By placing the artistic expressions of our differences in the very core of the womb, the artwork invites the viewer to look at our differences with fresh eyes, foetus eyes. For the initiated viewer, there’s no more ‘I’ and ‘He/She’, but only one connected complex being that embraces the most contradicting views of the world.
The first phase of this monumental art installation is dedicated to one of the bitterest inter-civilisation relations of our times – the Western-Arab tandem which is characterised by misunderstanding and intolerance, extremism and racism, and last but not least wars and terrorism. While business ties between both sides are closer then ever, their peoples stand in two diametrically opposite worlds, this, in the context of the existence of 500,000 strong British-Arab communities, and even more substantial Arab Diaspora in Europe and elsewhere, and the centrality of the Arab region in a global world.
In the absence of direct experiences of contemporary Arab cultures, the British public is victim of the media portrayed misconceptions that cast doubt over the characters and values of Arabs and over the possibility of harmonious co-existence within multicultural Britain.
More then 30 visual artists, half British and half Arabs, some, internationally acclaimed, will convene in Liverpool, the European Capital of Culture, for the first two weeks of July 2008. Teamed up in pairs, they will create collaborative artworks on themes that define the differences between their cultures. The artists will be working at the Blackie and will interact with the public through open-doors workshops and art exhibitions in Liverpool at the International Art Gallery and Tito’s (from 7th July – 7th August) and in London at Artiques Art Gallery (from 15th August – 15th September)
The project will then travel the world, just like an Olympic torch, involving hundred of artists in its building and once completed, the wholly autonomous nomadic art structure is expected to have walls surface of over 500 m2 and to be exhibited in London 2012 within the framework of the Cultural Olympiads before touring the world.
Curated by Dr. Nada Shabout, MIT professor of Art History and President of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA) Dr. Lotfi Kaabi, Director of MetaConcept, Planet Art eXchnage is not-for-profit project.
Fore more info, please contact
Dr. Nada Shabout
Email – shabout@unt.edu
Dr. Lotfi Kaabi,
The Womb project website: www.pax08.com.
Email – info@pax08.com