Call for Entry – Sowing Agency: Seeding the Future for Environmental Justice

Presented by the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) and Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC)

Exciting new opportunity for artists to share their work around environmental justice and how power, wealth and opportunity impact our relationship with the Earth.

Deadline:  Oct 30, 11:59 pm PST

Eligibility:  Open to all artists of color, of any gender identification, in the united states, 18 years and older

Sowing Agency is inspired by Asian Pacific Islander leaders fighting for environmental justice. Our communities are underrepresented in climate conversations, but this crisis impacts all of us differently across intersections of language, class, spirituality, cultural practices, geography, citizenship and indigeneity.

Both locally and globally, the effects of the world’s climate crisis are accelerating. California is now known for its annual fire season and long standing disasters rage against the atmosphere, driving us toward our own extinction. From the genocide and enslavement of native peoples to the systemic displacement of migrants, colonial and corporate greed scorch our relationship with the Earth. Yet as long as there is exploitation and catastrophe, there is resistance.

We seek work that responds to the following:

• How might we go about “seeding the future” and “seeding freedom” as Vandana Shiva writes? What are our roles in the fight for environmental justice? Who are the leaders in our communities resisting the industries polluting our bodies, the air, water and soil?
• How do power, wealth and opportunity impact our relationship with the Earth? How might we restore that which has been stolen? Can we?
• What can re-emerge, when we reflect on our kinship with the environment: ancestral, immigrant, refugee, indigenous, women, queer, trans and otherwise? How can we acknowledge and heal from climate grief in order to regenerate awareness and resilience?

This is a space to sow agency on the issues affecting the health, safety and sacred futures of our human and non-human communities.

Questions? Email exhibitions@aawaa.net

All selected artists will be provided with a $100 exhibition stipend.

Artists invited to work with APEN and Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour will each be offered a $500 fee for the commission and exhibition of the work.