This virtual exhibition will explore how the digital space provides us with coping mechanisms* while the quarantine is causing rapid changes to our physical and emotional world.

We want to map the landscape of these mechanisms, and investigate their potential to become new normalities. As we fall deeper into our digital selves, we reflect on our involuntary cocooning. What old and new coping mechanisms are we mobilising while we cocoon? How do they help us transition into a new normal?

We are calling for digital artists that reflect on quarantine-related problem-solving strategies, such as alternative methods of emotional and social support. Examples include; bodily or mental relaxation, breathwork and meditation techniques, digital pleasure and play, digital communication, protest, interventions, readjusting language, and (re)creating physical artwork online.

* Coping mechanisms are the strategies people often use in the face of stress and/or trauma to help manage painful or difficult emotions. We are using it in the widest sense of the word – mechanisms that help us acclimatise to sudden situational shifts.