About

This is a unique Art project that connects artists from the North and South of Europe. We challenge one of the oldest cliches, the North-South division of Europe, cold North and warm South prejudice, etc. The idea has started with the Corona outbreak and realisation that we are all in the same boat and we desperately need new, innovative ideas for collaboration and prosperity. Therefore, we have called Art to take the driving seat of our society, help us understand in what society we would like to wake up to after all this is over?

MAGNETS is a non-profit project which includes all of us, 12 artists + 3 people in the organisation. We are based in Barcelona, Athens, Belgrade, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Berlin…

At the moment of writing this, we are 6 artists working in the North of Europe, who collaborate with 6 artists from the South of Europe. The project started in 6 South-North duets.

Being from North and South, we have seen our collaborative energy as a strong magnetic field between the MAGNETS. Having everything upside down, so are the colours of our MAGNETS – we have deliberately switched the colours used in physics to emphasize our focus on the old cliche of “cold North”- therefore blue, and “warm South” – red side of Southern magnet pole.

We have randomly created 6 pairs of artists – one from the North and one from the South to create their reply to Mrs Europe questions. The first 3-week cycle was over resulting in 6 different pieces of Art.

After that, the project got in its second phase where artists are grouped in quartets, made of 2 duets. Over the course of the next 3 weeks, they cooperated in quartets towards finding their reply, solution, communication, and expression. The second phase resulted in 4 original Art pieces.

Finally, the third phase of the MAGNETS project is a group collaboration of all 12 artists, that after a period of 3 weeks resulted in one holistic reply in the form of Art.

Our goal is to present artistic collaboration in an online exhibition on this website, but also in an offline setting, starting with the premiere exhibition which is booked in Belgrade, O3one Artspace, October 2020. In Belgrade, the artists will for the first time meet each other face-to-face and collaborate during the offline workshop. The result of that collaboration will be also presented in Belgrade, O3one gallery. After the Southern premiere, we are aiming for a Northern European premiere which should be also followed by an offline workshop.

In the future, if given financial support and sponsorships, we would like to develop MAGNETS project as a pan-European collaboration where artists from West Europe and East Europe will join. Our aim is to arrive at a holistic expression, the voice of One Europe.

Finally, if the MAGNETS project continues to inspire artists, we will develop it to a global event.