There’s Nothing Wrong With Us

Guest Curator: Sadia Shirazi

Submission deadline: January 8th, 2016

The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC) is pleased to announce a call for submissions for our annual visual arts exhibition, There’s Nothing Wrong With Us, to be held at the Queens Museum, March 12 – April 8, 2016.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Us draws on this phrase as both an exhortation and a refusal. The exhibition borrows from Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons (2013), and refers to “The ones who are out of all compass however precisely they are located.” The show addresses the structures and persons who make a corrective call against the figure of an/other, to which the title frames its joyful response, bringing attention to people’s resistance to calls of normalization. The exhibition hopes to engage with refusals of regulation, correction, visibility, and governance as it is entangled with race, class, religion, sexuality, disability, citizenship and belonging.

Artworks that engage in this refusal and exhortation are invited in any media, including painting, work-on-paper, sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance, internet-based art, and audio works.

Sadia Shirazi is an architect, writer, and curator based in New York. She is engaged in a transdisciplinary practice that explores the relationship of art and architecture to sociopolitical issues, spatial imaginaries, and technologies of display. Her recent curatorial projects include 230 MB / Exhibition Without Objects (EWO) at Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi (2013), 136 MB / Exhibition Without Objects at The Drawing Room in Lahore (2012) and Foreclosed. Between Crisis and Possibility at The Kitchen in New York City (2011). She has contributed to various print and online publications including Bidoun, Sarai Reader, and Jadaliyya. Shirazi holds a MArch degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was a curatorial fellow of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She teaches at Parson’s The New School for Design in New York and is a PhD candidate in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University.

Submission Requirements:

Upload your materials to www.dropbox.com, and put them in a folder titled “SAWCCShow2016: [Your Full Name]”. Click the “share” link to share the folder with: vashow@sawcc.org. If you do not have an account, go to www.dropbox.com to set up a free account.

Do NOT submit your application via direct email.

Submissions must include all of the following:

6-10 JPEGS of artworks available for the exhibition: 5 MB maximum file size, 150 dpi minimum, titled as number underscore last name (ex. 01_Chaudhury)

Media artworks can be submitted via direct weblinks to preview works online (please provide passwords if required). Please add these weblinks in the image/media script

Resume/CV as a PDF document. Please include your name, mailing address, email, telephone number and website (if applicable) – 100 word artist statement pertaining to the above curatorial statement and your proposed artworks as a PDF document

100 word artist biography as a PDF document

Corresponding image/media script as a PDF document, including title, media, dimensions and date. If necessary, please provide a 50 word object statement pertaining to each artwork submitted for consideration. For media or performance artworks please provide the running time

Please note that the museum and SAWCC cannot provide art shipping costs in either direction or insurance for artworks-in-transit. Detailed instructions on the installation schedule for accepted works will be communicated to the artists after the selection process. Artists must generally be available to deliver and pick up works directly from the Queens Museum, but limited exceptions will be considered for out-of-town artists. Artists will be notified of acceptance in late January. Please email any questions to vashow@sawcc.org.

Applicants must be South Asian women and at least 18 years of age. “South Asian” is defined as persons originating from or citizens of any country of South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka), as defined by the United Nations. “Women” is defined as persons who identify themselves as female or gender-neutral.