The New Art Fest is in its fourth edition. This time, and against the psychosis caused by a virus, we decided to raise the stakes: everything online, and an international ‘open call’ in full worldwide closure. One hundred sixty-seven candidates responded. We chose 49.

There are artists mainly from Europe, America and Asia. The United States, Germany, Portugal and Brazil are the countries with the most presence. I also highlight the Chinese participation in this edition of Maker Art.

Pandemic was the inevitable leitmotiv at the moment when we decided to maintain the project despite the uncertainty. The relationship between art and catastrophes, or isolation, is not new. But the crossing of these two realities with the planet of biological and digital viruses, yes, is a unique, remarkable and lasting experience.

Some artists responded directly to the leitmotiv challenge (pandemic), others preferred an indirect response, others not even that, proposing recent works but previous to the epidemic. The result is asymmetrical. The sudden immersion in the digital networks of billions of people, things and processes, is still one of the strongest inspirations of the responses given to the call launched by the festival.

More and more artists find technological immersion in their laptops and mobile phones a way not only for creation (their virtual studios) but also for the diffusion and sharing of their artworks. In some way, we can say that the place for art is moving fast. It is a global, socially assertive and tectonic move that the old bureaucratic and speculative structures of official art, the so-called ‘contemporary art’, are unlikely to resist.

António Cerveira Pinto