Call for submissions: Unvanishing Traces
“all of them, all of them
everyone
drew back their heads, wide-eyed,
in pain,
and in fear,
and in dismay
and in anger
but not
no, not
in disbelief
because what is known, does not require believing or not believing”
-Taqralik Partridge, “Colten Boushie”
Xpace is currently seeking submissions from student and emerging artists for an upcoming group exhibition tentatively titled Unvanishing Traces, curated by Sanjit Dhillon and Vince Rozario. The exhibition will run from October 26 – December 1, 2018.
The exhibition grapples with the paradox of remembering the dead, particularly marginalized bodies, when existing cultural forms threaten to betray their memory. The missing and the murdered individuals who populate our headlines each day bear poignant witness to contemporary media practices of spectacularizing tragedy. In death their bodies are trivialised, sentimentalised, mystified, embellished and instrumentalized.
Furthermore, collective memory and consciousness are continually contested by socio-political narratives predicting which bodies do and do not matter. This exhibition seeks to inhabit the conflicted space between traces of the departed that refuse to vanish, and the representative regime which flattens, serializes, or otherwise erases their bodies.
While we welcome submissions in all media, and we encourage artists to explore multi-sensory approaches that challenge sight as the primary way of knowing. We are particularly interested in immersive installation work, new media, photography, and sculpture.
We acknowledge as well, this exhibition’s limitations- since it can never truly revive the dead or provide justice, solace and closure. However, we encourage artists to dwell in the space of that failure, in order to explore new modes of remembrance, mourning, liberation and healing.
Keywords:
Methods of Mourning, Systemic Violence, Absence and Erasure, Misrepresention, Precarity, Collective Memory, Social Legibility
Works must be ready for exhibition by October 16, 2018. Selected artists will be notified in September 2018. All selected participants will be paid a project fee for the exhibition.
To apply, you must provide:
1. Artist Statement (250-500 words): The Artist Statement should give a description of your overall practice as it relates to the project you are proposing.
2. Project Description (250-500 words): The project description should give a clear and concrete description of the work you are proposing for installation.
3. Technical Description: a list of all foreseeable technical requirements including equipment and materials necessary for installation within Xpace.
3. Curriculum Vitae (Max 3 pages): Your CV should include education and exhibition history, as well as any relevant experience, reviews, etc.
4. Visual Support Material with accompanying Support Material List (5-10 images and/or minutes of video): Images must be in JPG format. You may provide links to video work/documentation.
DEADLINE: September 1, 2018, 11:59pm