BE OPEN Art, an online art gallery set up by BE OPEN think tank, a humanitarian initiative founded by international entrepreneur and philanthropist Elena Baturina, launches a new competition for emerging artists, aimed to support those whose art best represents their regional, cultural and ethnic identities – BE OPEN Regional Art.
With the beginning of year 2023, BE OPEN expert community team will start selecting those of the artists who best represent the artistic tradition of a certain region to feature in the BE OPEN Art gallery and offer them greater visibility.
Each regional stage will last 3 months, therefore 4 stages will be run a year, with a winner named for each of them. BE OPEN Art will start with the Eastern Mediterranean region that includes such countries as Cyprus, Turkey, the Greek Dodecanese islands, and the countries of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Egypt. Next, the focus of the competition will move to the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Central Africa at the end of the year.
The regional winners will be awarded a money prize of EUR500, while a selection of artwork best representing the region will form an exhibition, in order to share the art with the wide public and celebrate the artists involved. For the first Eastern Mediterranean stage of the competition, the exhibition will presumably take place in Cyprus.
Founder of BE OPEN Elena Baturina said, “We are thrilled to see how many remarkable emerging talents are featured in our BE OPEN Art gallery. While we do our selections, we realise that in some regions gaining visibility for a young artist may be a much harder task that in the others. That is why our new trend of work will focus on areas with less developed art market, to support those artists. BE OPEN Regional Art will facilitate them in getting deserved attention and an opportunity to have their say in the art and therefore affect lives of people who appreciate it. Our first art exhibition will hopefully take place in Cyprus; we look forward to showcasing the amazing art of the Eastern Mediterranean there.”
The competition will run along the regular work of BOA, whose experts select 20 new artists for the gallery monthly, using online voting to name Artist of the Month and Artist of the Year.