'The Womb'

Liverpool, In the coming july, a group of 30 British and Arab artists will start creating the first building blocs of a monumental installation that mixes art and multiculturalism.

During their 2 weeks-long residency at the Blackie, the artists will create the first part of major new international artwork entitled 'The Womb' (www.pax08.com) . The installation addresses the question surrounding the eruption of the human consciousness in the womb and presents an alternative way of approaching our differences that occur only after birth, when 'I' and 'you' become differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and religion.
Presenting our differences in perception of what shapes our consciousness, the artworks that form the womb can be viewed as as abstraction of the world-in-waiting, a metaphor/invitation to move our differences inside the womb to interiorise their complexities and make them integral parts of our beings.
The Womb is a nomad and autonomous structure designed by Ross Lovegrove and to be build by estrablished and up-and-coming artists globally during 4 years (2008-2012).

Starting at Liverpool, the capital of culture, the project will cover the four continents before coming back to London in 2012 during the summer Olympics.. Once completed, this monumental nomad structure womb will measure up to 1000m2 of artworks and will be the gift of artists to the world. Upon entering the room-womb, the viewer regresses to the foetal state and is invited to an ‘initiation’ journey through the world of consciousness, where our differences are a uniting factor and not a reason of conflict (as often emerges from the real life differentiations).

In parallel to the creative collaboration stage that will be held in Liverpool from 1st to 15th of July, the participant artists will have their individual works staged in 'Oceans apart', an exhibition that will tour Liverpool (The International and Tito's art galleries - from 5th to 17th July) and London (Artiquea - from 24th August to 13th September)

A second exhibition of the Collabotrative Circle entitled 'Enlightenment, Act 1', that will feature the artworks created during the the first 2 weeks of July will be held in The Blackie, Liverpool from 13th September to 15th October.

ABOUT THE CURATOR and THE ARTISTS

The Womb is curated by Dr.Lotfi Kaabi and Dr.Nada Shabout.

Born in Tunisia, Dr.Lotfi Kaabi has lived and worked in several countries including Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, France, USA, Spain, Germany and Slovenia. He received an M.S, PhD in digital imaging, MBA, B.S Economics. Lotfi worked at the UCLA and other universities in the field of medical imaging, space technology and remote sensing before founding several IT start-ups. During the last 5 years, he became interested in the art, founded "Regard" art gallery, curated several artists and published an art critique supplement. In 2006, he moved to the UK and founded MetaConcept that aims to organise art events and to offer the SMEs with site specific art installations that reflect their corporate values.

Nada Shabout was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the oldest of three children born to a Palestinian mother and Iraqi father. Shabout was trained in architecture at the New York Institute of Technology,. She has also earned BFA fine arts, MA and PhD in the Humanities with a concentration in art history and criticism from the University of Texas at Arlington, 1999. is a founding member and first president (2007-2009) of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab world, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA).
The Womb Project

Planet Art eXchange

Host city of the European capital of culture 2008, Liverpool is a fitting place for the conception of the vision of Planet Art eXchange (PAX), a collaborative circle of artists. Our aim is to use art as a unifying force, as a medium of persuation, our vision is to create a WOMB, a multicultural, translingual, visual encounter communicating diverse perspectives, perceptions, sensations and experiences to the viewer promoting tolerance, understanding and solidarity
Home to the Womb, The Blackie (aka Great Georges Community Cultural Project) is a community arts centre based in a former Congregational Church. Established in 1968, Britains’s first community arts projects has a long history of hosting play and community groups and a cultural programme of arts workshops, youth projects, performances and exhibitions, with the emphasis on cultural diversity and shared experience.
Opening after six years, its regeneration has seen the preservation of the original structure and architecture.
Locals have long known The Blackie as a central hub of the community where children and families were brought together to create ans play. Its protective walls, reconstructed from bricks garnered from around the city, enclose a protecti9ve space where up to 150 children at a time were nurtured and given the freedom to play and develop, fed by food on the enormous gas stove which still sleeps in the bowels of the centre patiently waiting to be fired up again, a fitting place to house the Womb.
Described by her curator Lotfi Kaabi as an artistic Olympic torch, this wholly autonomous and nomad structure of monumental proportions, the collaborative creation of hundreds of established and up and coming artists, will traverse continents over a four year period exploring the birth of our consciousness and the rise of our differentiations: culture, race, religion, politics and socio-economics.
The Creative stage of the Womb starts here in Liverpool in July with 40 artists from 13 countries.

Art, a Powerful antidote to the hate, fear and mistrust generated by politics, humanizes what politics demonize

This year, the Womb theme is CULTURE and the relationship between the Arab world and the West. 2009 will see RACE explored in Grahamstown, South Africa, host if the National Arts Festival; RELIGION is the theme of 20120, hosted by the European Capital of Culture, Istanbul 2010; and in Guadalajara, Mexico, host of the 2011 Pan-American Games, artists will e exploring the issues surrounding the land and ECONOMICS divisions. Finally the womb will return to these shores for the London 2012 Olympics, where the great social divider CLASS will be examined.

It is an organic being that is evolving in the Womb, following the developmental stages of the foetus, a being growing in space and time, evolving from the fourth dimension of ideas.

The final creation will be a monumental installation made of Aluminium and Plexiglas that will span 1000m sq of artworks.
The specifications are simple: 1m sq of Plexiglas used to create an artwork on the theme of the year, the language- DNA codes A,C,G,T; the medium, visual art.
DNA, the code of life
The artists have been asked to use the building blocks of life; DNA. The DNA code GATC is used to create a personal message. We all share this DNA code; although we are are all different, we all share the basic building blocks of humanity; this universal language, this translingual form. Art is also translingual and transcultural.
A can be the A for "Art", "Amour" (Love in French), Anxiety, or "Ana" (I in Arabic) , " Alma" (Soul in Italian), etc ..
C for "Coeur" (Heart in French), "Connection", "Conflict", "Community", etc.
G for "Gun", "Gender", "Gene"..
T for "Ti" (you in Russian), "Trend", "Twist"
By placing the artistic expressions of our differences in the very core of the womb, the womb invites the viewer to look at our differences with the freshness of the foetus eyes. For the initiated viewer, ‘I’ and ‘You’ disappear, leaving space to the connected and complex being that embraces the most contradicting views of the world
So far, 40 artists from 13 countries have been involved in creating 50m sq of art.
This is an open invitation to all artists, established and new talents. The Womb is a community project and anyone with a desire to participate and something to say is welcome to contribute.