Call for Artists: Hidden & Forbidden Identities | Venice (Italy) – February 15-20, 2012
Deadline: January 09, 2012

International ArtExpo and The Seven Project are selecting all interesting video/short.films and photo works to include in the next 2011 Exhibition:

Hidden & Forbidden Identities - International Videoart Festival and Photo Exhibition at Procuratie Court Yards, San Marco / Giardini Greenhouse, near Biennale – Castello / Parish Church San Giovanni Battista in Bragora, Castello / Venezia Terminal Passeggeri, Stazione Marittima, Dorsoduro / Museum Palazzo Grimani - Polo Museale di Venezia / Residence I.R.E Zitelle (Venice, Italy)

organizers: International ArtExpo, The Seven Project
curators: Luca Curci, Elis Saint Juste Gluckstein
project coordinator: Biagio Ciraldo
partners: Associazione Arte in Bragora, Laverna Net.Label
media partner: It’s LIQUID Group
place screenings: Procuratie Court Yards, San Marco / Giardini Greenhouse, near Biennale – Castello / Parish Church San Giovanni Battista in Bragora, Castello / Venezia Terminal Passeggeri, Stazione Marittima, Dorsoduro / Museum Palazzo Grimani - Polo Museale di Venezia / Residence I.R.E Zitelle (Venice, Italy)
dates: February 15–20, 2012

The deadline for applications is January 09, 2012

The number of works with which you can participate is unlimited.

The selections will be based on the main concept of “Hidden & Forbidden Identities”. The Exhibition will be presented at the same time in different places of the city of Venice from 15 to 20 February in the contest of the project “Contaminating - For the Upcoming Thought”.

“Whoever might believe to understand a phenomenon without knowing its background, loses the opportunity to cope with an instructive manual about the sense or nonsense of masking. This is even more true in relation to an event whose psychological, religious and ethnographic implications represent a real source of studies and virtuosity of the soul and of the body.
We should remember that in the myths of different world cultures, the tribes in Africa, various peoples in Asia, in North America, in Europe, the mask has a double matrix: it is connected with an archetype of the human soul, with aggression, and on the other hand it is correlated with the essential passage during an initial ritual of death and life. What has remained of these myths and of past archetypes in our every days’ disguise?
Carnival means mask, Carnival means disguise, Carnival permits any kind of funny odd things. Whoever feels a sudden desire to change, himself or his environment, from any point of view, is mature for Carnival. But what everyday life normally allows only to artists, in the frenzied days of the uncountable, its is allowed to everybody, at least apparently.
The artist instead needs not wait for Carnival to join the consciousness of himself and of his art. He does not only know about the provocations and the messages he can refer to, he even looks for them, he creates them, he attracts their approach with a giant magnet. As the result of these efforts, we might ask, what does the artist recognize in the end? By which means does the artist obtain the magic formula to change the world, in a more or less carnival way? Mask is an ambiguous object, behind which the truth likes to hide itself in order to save its depth. But on the other hand it is an object we manipulate to avoid looking on reality, and to escape from it, which is even worse. It is the artists’ objective to put into evidence what art claims from this specific occasion which is more than privileged from the point of view of observation.
Is it a really sad chant, Carnival’s litany, Carnival the wicked traitor, the tyrant of one day, an illusion which ends in the instant when we take off our wig?
So we would like to leave to the Artists the mission to illustrate, on Aristotelian level, what for the others and also for us, remains on the bottom of a soul rich of hope, but which, at the same time, is deprived of the means to realize itself.” Elis Saint Juste Gluckstein, 2011

All video works must be on DVD (PAL or NTSC), no matter what the original source medium. The maximum length of videos should be 10 minutes. All photo works on every kind of support are accepted. The maximum dimensions allowed per each image are 150 cm per side. Send your works submissions with a CV/biography, videography and some still images (only for videoartists) and some samples of photo works (only for artists) to:

International ArtExpo
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 33
70122 Bari, Italy

The participation in Hidden & Forbidden Identities requires an entry fee for every artwork submitted and selected. Participation open to: professional artists, architects and designers, associate groups and studios.

International ArtExpo is a not for profit organization that provides a significant forum for cultural dialogue between all artists from different cultures and countries. We depend on the support of you. ArtExpo is grateful to all of the institutions, corporations, and individuals who support our efforts. We work with a number of national and international galleries as well as publishers, museums, curators and writers from all over the world. We help artists through solo and group exhibitions, gallery representation, magazine reviews and advertisements, press releases, internet promotion, as well as various curatorial projects.

Contaminante - For the Upcoming Thought is the provoking title of a project, conceived and curated by the TheSeven, which represents a contemporary story in twelve chapters situated in twelve different sites in the City of Venice and in its Lagoons. The connection of all these places is a manual for an intriguing alternative travel into literature, into the world of fairy tales which get materialized through art, design and architecture. The updated map of Contaminante offers permanent site specific art works realized by international artists in ten sites throughout 2012.