L’Internationale invited artists to create works based on balcony concerts

The international association of museums L’Internationale invited 14 authors to take part in a project on human life under quarantine and to create works based on balcony concerts.

Seven institutions from around the world, including the Reina Sofía Art Center in Madrid and the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, invited artists to create works of art right on their balconies dedicated to human life under quarantine in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Manuel Borja-Villell, director of the Queen Sofia Art Center, explains that the project’s goal is to create a “visual analogue of singing on the balcony, which has become very popular in Italy.” It is worth adding that not only in Italy - in many European cities people who do not have the opportunity to go out are singing together from the balconies and at the windows, or they applaud the doctors if they are at home near hospitals where they treat patients with COVID-19.

All the institutions involved in the project, including the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp, are part of the international association of museums L’Internationale.

Borja-Villell told: “Initially, we invited 14 artists to take part in the project, but everyone can join it. We ask you to create an artistic intervention on your window or balcony. Of course, artists are given complete freedom of expression, but we ask them to reflect on what it means to be in quarantine and think about the future. It is important to remember that people are inseparable from nature, that they need joy and care. ”

“In these difficult times, it was important for us to find a way to support artists. We thought that we could ask them to tell what their life is like now, using the balcony as a kind of public space. Of course, they are free to interpret this idea as they wish. Now we invite artists and publish a list of project participants as soon as everyone confirms their participation, ” -said Charles Eshe, director of the Van Abbe Museum, to The Art Newspaper.