XChange. A female art project

United by the tagline ‘Change is a Team Sport,’ Adidas Originals was looking to bring together a series of teams all over the world to celebrate 50 Years of Superstar. The teams were simultaneously brought together globally to deliver positive cultural change in areas of need. In Berlin, this came in the form of a unique project centered around female representation in the art world.

XCHANGE is an Adidas Originals initiative that supports female artists and allies. Even in 2020, women are still heavily underrepresented in galleries, auction houses, museums and public art. Our shared wish/challenge was to strike a movement to give female artists space and opportunity for their work to create cultural moments that influence social change, raise awareness and inspire our community. We partnered with Adidas and design agency AboutKokomo, to strengthen the representation of women in art.

Female artists represent just 2% of the market.

To kick-start the project, Amsterdam Berlin led the shortlisting, recruitment and management of 3 artist mentors and 8 talented female artists to participate in the three-month long campaign. The XCHANGE Space in Kreuzberg opened with a public launch party in February 2020. In this space, the selected artists were given the exclusive opportunity to work on a project, to network and to exchange ideas. The intention was to present or show the final works in a jointly developed exhibition at Gallery Weekend. 

Amsterdam Berlin captured a full creative content suite for the project. Consisting of individual artist and curator portraits, 2 curated and styled Team Portraits, an inspiring precap film to introduce the project and its objectives and ongoing weekly social content featuring highlights from the space. The campaign demanded cross-functional collaboration across the areas of Brand, Talent & Influencers, Content & Social Media and PR.

Alongside high engagement across the social media posting,received widespread PR coverage in several prominent art and fashion magazines. The project was put on hold at the end of March 2020 due to COVID-19. 

A final exhibition was held featuring artwork of available artists: Atusa, Denise, Kristina, Marie & Feline from 22-27 June.