OPEN CALL - We Come in Pieces

Prospect Art invites visual artists worldwide to apply for the 2027 NEW WORK commission, a $1,500 project grant supporting the creation of a new conceptually driven work responding to the curatorial theme We Come in Pieces, developed by 2026 to 2027 Curatorial Fellow Alma Sammel. Through a single application, artists will also be considered for ONE WORK, our online series featuring in depth conversations centered on a single completed artwork, and BROADCAST, a curated program of screenings, artist talks, and discussions.

What if the Alien is not a being, but a position? A way of listening from elsewhere? We Come in Pieces proposes the Alien as a method for shifting perspective. Rather than treating the Alien as an Other, the program approaches alienness as a practice of estrangement, inviting artists and audiences to encounter the world beyond familiar human centered narratives, as if it were shared, unfamiliar, and shaped by multiple forms of agency. Rather than asking how we belong to the world, the project asks what becomes perceptible when we encounter the world as strangers. We are interested in works that displace the point of listening, seeing, sensing, or knowing, opening new ways of perceiving and relating to the world around us.

The project explores relationships between human and more than human worlds. These might include speculative cosmologies, ecological systems, technologies, landscapes, histories, infrastructures, nonhuman forms of intelligence, or other ways of understanding the interconnected conditions that shape contemporary life. Satellites and orbital debris, fungal networks, oceans, atmospheric systems, algorithmic intelligences, and other distributed forms of agency appear not simply as metaphors, but as participants in shared planetary conditions. How might artistic practices help us listen to these distributed forms of presence? How might they create new ways of relating to entities, environments, and systems that do not speak our language? We welcome proposals that question dominant human centered narratives through speculative, poetic, political, ecological, technological, historical, personal, or interdisciplinary approaches. We are less interested in illustrating these ideas than in artistic practices that make them experiential, creating moments where familiar ways of seeing, sensing, and knowing give way to unexpected forms of relation. Research based and conceptually driven practices are especially encouraged.

Rather than searching for life elsewhere, We Come in Pieces invites artists to imagine new forms of shared planetary belonging and to explore how we might learn to live differently together here.

NEW WORK - One artist will receive a $1,500 commission to produce a new conceptually driven work responding to the curatorial theme. The commissioned project should be completed within twelve months of selection.

ONE WORK- A select number of applicants will be invited to participate in ONE WORK, our online series featuring an in depth conversation centered on a single completed artwork.

BROADCAST- Selected applicants may also be invited to participate in BROADCAST, a curated online program of screenings, artist talks, conversations, and critical dialogue responding to the theme We Come in Pieces, curated by 2026 to 2027 Curatorial Fellow Alma Sammel.

This call is open to professional visual artists working in any medium at any career stage, except those currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate studio art programs. We encourage proposals from artists working across moving image, installation, sculpture, photography, performance, sound, digital media, social practice, and interdisciplinary forms. We welcome practices that embrace ambiguity, experimentation, and multiple ways of understanding perception, identity, memory, ecology, technology, history, and collective imagination.

As a reference point, here is a selection of artists and projects whose work resonates with this year's curatorial framework:

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead; Sophie Calle, Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors of Green Wood Cemetery; Hito Steyerl, Factory of the Sun; Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death; Shirin Neshat, Turbulent; Kader Attia, Narrative Vibrations; Cao Fei, RMB City; Bas Jan Ader, In Search of the Miraculous; Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Moving Backwards; Candice Lin and Patrick Staff, Hormonal Fog; Christina Agapakis, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, and Sissel Tolaas, Resurrecting the Sublime; Roberto Cuoghi, Imitation of Christ; Lisa Reihana, In Pursuit of Venus [infected]; Vajiko Chachkhiani, Living Dog Among Dead Lions; Samson Young, Muted Situations; Charles Gaines, Manifestos; Adrian Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance; Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors; and Boyle Family, World Series.

Our programs may not be the best fit if your practice does not resonate with the artists and projects we have previously featured or with the references listed above.

Please note that the ONE WORK program is exclusively open to visual artists. Writers interested in contributing to Prospect Art should email gioj@prospectart.org with writing samples for consideration.

We ask for a $10 administrative fee to apply, which helps offset the cost of administering this open call. Prospect Art is a small, artist run nonprofit committed to supporting experimental practices, and this modest fee helps us keep our programs accessible and sustainable. If the fee presents a financial barrier, applicants may request a waiver, no explanation necessary, by emailing submissions@prospectart.org before the deadline.

Artists need a PayPal account to receive funds if selected.