Downlock - Digital Exhibition in reaction to COVID-19 

DOWNLOCK (as part of four interconnected exhibitions around FREEDOM)

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This text is an excerpt of the open-call we launched in the middle of March. After having received dozens of artworks (video, sculptures, digital collages, paintings, and photographs) worldwide, we started showing some of them online while there will be two one-day exhibitions displaying the submitted proposals for a real audience. So let's hope the virus burns and fades away quickly.

Dear artists in the broadest sense of the word,

On the internet, they are currently circulating dozens of open calls stimulating the artistic reaction against the COVID-19 virus. As recent creators of "The Nomadic Art Gallery", in New Zealand, we are amazed by the innovative campaigns that have already been launched. Since the aim of our unconventional mobile gallery is to bring art to the people through different thema&c exhibi&ons and ar&s&c interven&ons, we also make an appeal to share your digital initiatives and video graphics work.

Having organized 4 exhibitions, at various events such as the Hamilton Garden Arts Fes&val and Pride Parade in Wellington, and having been on several New Zealand radio stations, we would like to use our traveling art gallery as a symbol of "freedom" during those lonely &mes worldwide. As the virus con&nues to disrupt the daily lives of people across the globe, forcing many to isolate themselves, we gave artists worldwide the opportunity to send personal and artistic messages of what it means to be free now that you are locked down. Those messages are in turn diffused throughout two secret loca&ons in the South Island of New Zealand, where such a na&onal “lock-down” measure came later than in most other countries. It would be a way of reflec&ng on our "freedom" as individuals. It is only when our freedom is taken from us that we realize how precious it is and how it can be confined/defined creatively.

To be able to develop this, we would need as many artists, ONLY FROM LOCKED DOWNED ZONES, as possible to send us their artistic messages, through video. Videos of one minute maximum where you explain, in words, pictures, movement, etc., to us what you miss the most about your “freedom" and accentuate it as a mental state.

These videos will be shown throughout two randomly chosen loca&ons in New Zealand, in our Nomadic Art Gallery, where viewers will physically have the opportunity, one by one, to hear and see these stories. The whole exhibit and its reac&ons will also be streamed live for those, for obvious reasons, not able to come.

Best regards,

Arthur Buerms & Eugenie Coche