Through their artist residency project, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai provides an unique opportunity to young artists to travel to Shanghai and explore the contemporary art scene, magnificent ateliers, theatres galleries and museums that light up the city, transforming Shanghai into an avant-garde experiment in imagining the future. While the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Artist Residency aims to contribute to the cultural and artistic development in Shanghai, it also benefits artists by providing them a creative space to focus on creating their art and also giving an opportunity to meet and interact with other artists. The Swatch Group also assists the artists in applying for a Chinese visa, provides free round trip tickets to Shanghai and a free stay at the hotel from 3 -6 months.
18 work-live apartments are occupied by selected guest artists-in-residence from around the world. The antithesis of the ‘tortured artist’, these lucky painters, videographers, composers and other arty types create and bed down in designer ateliers, relax in the chic communal library, kitchen and lounges overlooking the Bund, and exhibit their work in sunlit studios and blonde-wood gallery spaces.
At the end of the residence, the artists have to leave their artwork at the hotel as part of the Swatch Art Peace Hotel Collection and will be presented to the public in the Virtual Museum.
While the Swatch Art Peace Hotel is a Mecca for artists visiting Shanghai, it always has a waiting list for tourists who wish to stay here. On the fourth floor, seven individually designed rooms and suites are available for reservations. These range from simple 40 sq metres abodes with bare oak floors and grey brick walls re-purposed from Shanghai alleys, to four quirky, themed suites stretching up to 250 sq metres.
The suites designed by Parisian designers Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku of Jouin Manku are inspired by Chinese culture with an edge of Shanghai audacity. In the Happiness Suite, a king-sized bed is cupped inside a cane half-birdcage, while a black ink-well bathtub is shielded from view by semi-transparent silk screens splashed with watercolour characters. The kaleidoscopic Prosperity Suite is a rock-star worthy pad with a canary yellow lounge leading through to a huge cocktail bar and mirror clad jet shower. Welcome to the Swatch Art Peace Hotel…An art paradise, a melting pot of cultures!!!
