CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Crip’d Ecologies: Unfurling Expanded Environments

Root Division invites Disabled* artists working in all media to submit work for Crip’d Ecologies: Unfurling Expanded Environments, co-curated by moira williams and Jeremiah Barber, to be presented at Root Division in February 2024.

The exhibition will feature Disabled artists addressing ecosystems that are personal, shared, imagined, and invites artists across disabilities to consider the following curatorial question: How can we bring dynamic Crip strategies into landscapes, ecosystems, and bodies impacted by climate change to support practices of becoming, grief, abundance, and multispecies relationships instead of scarcity?

How does Disability Justice and Environmental Justice intertwine? How can Environmental Justice movements become inclusive? How can we expand ideas of “environment” beyond binaries of urbanism and ableism? How do Disabled artists or communities address overlapping crises of racial inequity, housing, health, and environmental destruction? How can eco art open into a more complex reflection of our fear, anger, and desire? How can our movements to dismantle white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and colonialism truly happen when Disability Arts are underrepresented and under-valued?

Crip’d Ecologies invites submissions from people across disabilities to apply. Root Division encourages submissions from artists from diverse communities and cultural backgrounds including Black, Indigenous, POC & LGBTQQIP2SAA+. Submissions can include art in any media including sound, video, participation/participatory (sensorial and on-line), and text among others. Artists are encouraged to prioritize accessibility in their submission. These include: accessible sightlines, Image Descriptions, ASL translation of public text, Audio Descriptions, captioning, and more.

Confirmed artists include: Sharmi Basu, Vanessa Cruz, Octavia Rose Hingle, Bonnie Lewkowicz and Judith Smith, Tricia Rainwater, Jaklin Romine, Ruth Tabancay, Sunaura Taylor, and Anuj Vaidya.

Alongside the exhibition, Crip’d Ecologies: Unfurling Expanded Environments will also host a two day convening and offer hybrid, online and in person, programming.

*Disabled includes but is not limited to; Blind, Low Sighted, d/DEAF, HOH, ILL, Chronically ILL, MAD, FAT, Neurodivergent.

Priority Deadline: Monday, November 6, 2023, 11:59 pm

Exhibition dates: February 1 – March 10, 2024
Notifications: November 30, 2023

Video Description: A 12 minute and 16 second video. On the entire right side of the video is a long video screen. This screen shows a male presenting Black DEAF ASL Interpreter from the hips up. The interpreter has a roundish heart shaped face with warm brown eyes, medium cropped black hair, and a thin black mustache. A medium long beard frames the edges of his jaw and chin. He is wearing a loose white short sleeved collared shirt, a thick gold linked bracelet on his right arm, and a gold earring in his left earlobe. The DEAF ASL Interpreter’s background is a solid greenish tan. He interprets moira and Jeremiah’s open call video for disabled artists at Root Division. On the left side of the video are 2 video boxes sitting on top of each other. The boxes float on a solid greenish tan background. The top video holds moira reading parts of the open call outloud. moira is pictured from the chest up. They are a disabled Indigenous person with long dark hair and black blue eyes. They  wear a multi-colored patched long sleeve shirt. Jeremiah sits in the bottom video screen. He is a white male presenting person with short light brown blonde hair, short beard and mustache. He wears a lavender short sleeve shirt. both moira and Jermiah wear glasses and have blurred backgrounds.