A coalition of museums commissioned artists to make art on balconies.
Sanja Iveković, Triangle 2000+, 1979. Collection of the Modern Gallery, Ljubljana. Courtesy of the artist.
Artists confined during the COVID-19 pandemic are being commissioned to make art on their balconies. An initiative launched by L’Internationale (an international coalition of seven museums) and dubbed “Artists in Quarantine” will feature 16 artists from around the world creating artworks on their balconies. The artists’ works will be made public one by one on the websites and social media accounts of the individual museums and L’Internationale. The project launched today with Cardboards (2020), a project by the Polish artist Paweł Żukowski whereby residents of Warsaw hung slogans from 40 balconies around the city.
By asking the participating artists to make work from their present living space, the initiative intends to broach a conversation about the shifting parameters of public and private space, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The artists, including Sanja Iveković, Akram Zaatari, and Kate Newby, are asked to examine the important role that virtual spaces, windows, and balconies have taken on during this time of global isolation.
The initiative encourages us to question the potential that our domestic spaces have to make dynamic statements in the public sphere. The participating artists’ responses to the prompt will be shared every Tuesday and Thursday for the next three weeks.
