Diplomacy Through Art

The exponential rise of digital art reflects both the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the future of contemporary art, by harnessing technology to overcome limitations of geographies, sensibilities and real-world needs. ARTX30 artists were given a ‘30-Day Challenge’ to respond to the friendship theme and work together on a new digital artwork in pairs, each comprising a Singapore-based artist and a China-based artist.

Their one-month artistic collaboration was marked by three milestones: The artists first met over Zoom to speed-date and select their collaborators with whom they put together an artistic proposal. At the mid-point of their production period, each pair presented their work-in-progress to a panel of mentors who gave valuable feedback. Their partnership came to a close with the presentation of their artistic outcomes to one another, friends and guests at the end of the month. Meanwhile, additional Zoom sessions between the creative team and specific artists or artist-pairs were conducted to intervene into the creative process where it was due.

Artists were given prompts to reflect on aspects of friendship through small creative exercises on a daily basis during the month-long production period. Panel discussions were also organised to further deliberate on key issues around this project.