CALL FOR ENTRIES:
TACTICS OF ERASURE AND REWRITING HISTORIES
Craft Contemporary is calling for submissions for a group show of image-based works, under the working title: Tactics of Erasure and Rewriting Histories.
From monuments to buildings to names in history books, actors and events get recirculated and used depending on the needs of the times. Although a minor figure in his lifetime, Christopher Columbus was made into “the Father of America” in the effort to find a uniting figure for the different white immigrant communities in North America. More recently, the meaning of the Portuguese explorer is yet again being questioned: more than 33 statues of Columbus have been removed as well as more than 50 Confederate historical figures. In Boston, MA, the statue of Christopher Columbus was found sprayed with the message “Black Lives Matter”.
These acts of reclamation and removal are the making of history in real time. While they are historically a part of institutional practice, recent grassroot waves of removals of public statues and denouncing of past heroes form a message of refusal and resistance against centuries of genocide, slavery, colonization and racial oppression. In its place, one can start uncovering other historical figures or events that celebrate those who were survivors and initiators of this long lineage of struggle against injustice.
In opposition to the opacity of the bronze, marble or stone often used for state-sanctioned monuments and their association with imperialist forms of canonization, this exhibition will ask: what other forms of representation can capture the fluidity of the people’s power, the refusal of hierarchy and idolization and the unstable truth of history? What processes can reveal that which is absent or has been caused to disappear?
APPLICATION DEADLINE IS MAY 31, 2022, AT 11:59PM PST.
Entries are open to visual artists, over the age of 18, residing in LA County, engaged in processes of erasure and/or revelation (including but not limited to redaction, removal, collage, analogue photographic processes, casting, 3D printing). Works can be 2D or 3D. Open to performative elements.
Submitted entries may address historical uses of reclamation and erasure in service of a dominant narrative, subversive tactics of erasure as forms of resistance, alternative ways of commemoration and representation, repressed or underrepresented histories, personal memory over official history, the validity of the photographic document, etc...
Final selections will be made and recipient(s) notified by the first week of July. The selected artist(s) will each receive an honorarium, amount based on the number of artists selected, for their participation in the exhibition. They should be amenable to the installation period at Craft Contemporary between September 19 – 30, 2022 and open to participating in workshops or related programming.
Works selected by the jury will be exhibited in the front window of Craft Contemporary during October 2, 2022 – January 8, 2023.
Requirements:
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- Online entry form
- Short bio and CV uploaded
- Response to the Theme — how do the selected works in your portfolio address the problematics raised in the call? How is your individual existing practice relevant to the proposed topic?
- 100 words limit Special Requirements (optional) — If applicable, please list requirements you may need for the display of your artwork: material or intellectual resources, partnerships, etc... The Craft Contemporary may provide an additional production budget towards these requirements if feasible.
- 10 images of work or 5 minutes of audio-visual materials or combination of 5 images and 3 minutes of clips
Jurors: Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Visual Artist and Holly Jerger, Exhibitions Curator at Craft Contemporary
Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a transdisciplinary artist, working across performance, video and installation, based in Los Angeles. Born in Thailand in 1989, they grew up in Europe before moving to the US in 2011.
They received their Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole and a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They earned BFA at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and MFA at the California College of the Arts, in San Francisco.
Recipient of the SOMA Summer Award, Mexico City and the emi kuriyama spirit award.
Recent projects include: Stranger Intimacy, residency at the ONE Archives and USC PAM (LA), Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, The Fulcrum Press (LA), Excerpts of Memories From the Screen, a Zoom performative lecture for BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, BANGKOK CITY CITY GALLERY (Bangkok), Irrational Exhibits 11: Place-Making and Social Memory, Track 16 (LA). They curated the MAHA Pavilion for the Bangkok Biennial 2020.
Holly Jerger (she/her) is the exhibitions curator at Craft Contemporary (formerly Craft & Folk Art Museum) in Los Angeles. Since 2015, she has organized numerous exhibitions including solo presentations of Betye Saar, Kay Sekimachi, Gronk, Diedrick Brackens, and Beatriz Cortez as well as the surveys: The Body, The Object, The Other and Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ball State University, Indiana, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she also taught. She has served on the boards of the Museum Educators of Southern California (MESC) and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society.