03/07/2018
Call for Artists
Exhibition
Harcourt House Main Gallery
September 20–30, 2018 Edmonton Design Week
Over the past three decades, we have seen art practices that strive to create connections between disparate individuals, communities, and cultural entities. Dialogic art, socially engaged art, and pedagogical art practices show the possibilities of art’s intervention and its impact at various scales. Meanwhile, local and global societies have seen an increased number of conflicts that inevitably shape our lives around the presence of friction. The ethnographer Anna L. Tsing defines “friction” as “the awkward, unequal, unstable, and creative qualities of interconnection across differences” in her Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2005). By creating and presenting an encounter with differences, an artist connects a viewer to a certain community addressed in the artwork. Although odd, precarious, or embarrassing, this encounter may lead to creative qualities of experience and outcomes. Such practice is an act of designing connections in societies that are replete with conflicts and frictions.
The proposed exhibition, “Designing Connection in Friction,” seeks to present recent artistic research that strives to create an artistic intervention in a community where social injustice threaten socially marginalized individuals and to foster a connection between these people and the viewers. We welcome artworks that address issues in social taboos and norms that restrain individuals’ human rights; absurdity in everyday life in capitalism, colonial legacy, gender violence, and environmental issues; and unequal power relationship of global economy and politics. We welcome submissions of artwork in any media and documentation of community-based activities that are related to the theme. Two or three selected works will be displayed at Harcourt House Artist Run Centre (Edmonton, AB) Main Gallery Space during Edmonton Design Week (September 20–30, 2018).
To submit a complete artwork or a proposal, please send the following:
· artist statement including the title, medium, dimension, and description of artwork
· artist bio
· digital image (JPEG) or video (please name the digital file “your last name_title”)
to [email protected] by March 17, 2018.
This exhibition is presented by the University of Alberta’s Art and Design Graduate Students’ Association (ADGSA). The ADGSA seeks to promote the circulation of ideas among emerging artists and thinkers in Edmonton, across Canada and beyond, and to invigorate our community by collaboratively hosting exhibitions.
Artist fee TBD.
Curator in Charge: Vicki Sung-yeon Kwon of the ADGSA
For any inquiry, please contact [email protected].
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