The Womb Project

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.

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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.

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.

Art is a universal language that encourages dialogue: effective art impacts the senses, speaks to the intuitive, arousing emotions and facilitating understanding, often provoking new insights and perspectives.

Celebration of cultural diversity through art can create new realities.

The inclusiveness breaks down barriers, builds bridges and fosters tolerance, acceptance and respect between communities and cultures

ART IS PERSUASIVE, THUS PEACE WILL BE MOST EFFECTIVELY PROMOTED BY CREATIVE PEOPLE

The Womb creates a social networking exchange program for artists worldwide, offering hospitality, shared knowledge and techniques, Host and guest artists are being brought together to create this concept, united within a vision that celebrates multi-culturalism.

History has shown that when differences are embraced, great enlightened civilisations burgeoned: The Ottoman Empire prospered by enriching its culture and technology with Christian and Jewish contributions, and the Iberian Peninsula shone in the Dark Ages through the interaction of Christians, Jewish and Muslim traditions.

ART HAS NO BARRIERS, NO BORDERS, NO FRONTIERS, ART IS LIMITLESS; IT CAN LEAD THE WAY.