Written by PJ Policarpio, Brooklyn-based community engager, educator, and curator

Last summer I was invited by Dixon Place to organize an exhibition of visual art in conjunction with HOT! Festival: NYC’s Celebration of Queer Culture, the world’s pioneering and longest-running LGBTQ Art Festival featuring visual and performance art.

Working with co-curator Beck Feibelman, we organized Visualizing Queerness: 7 Contemporary Artists, bringing together work by seven artists—Ana Benaroya, Zen Browne, Tinker Coalescing, Machine Dazzle, Sara Lautman, André Singleton and King Texas —who sought to represent themselves and their circles with a combination of respect, wit, dignity, defiance, and glamour, defying queer stereotypes and characters. They created beautiful and dynamic images of communities either on or just under the surface, displaying clarity of vision and boldness of expression that are important to the work of making their communities visible and powerful. As they should be.

This year’s exhibition, RALLY: Queer Art and Activism, will focus on art defined by an atmosphere of social unrest and violence across the country and its impact on art and art making for queer artists. We are interested in the varied aesthetic approaches to resist, protest, and address widespread injustices against vulnerable communities.  See more information about the Open Call for Artists below.

OPEN CALL to LGBTQ Artists – RALLY: Queer Art and Activism

Exhibition dates: July 2015 – August 2015 in New York City

HOT! Festival The NYC Celebration of Queer Culture

The oldest annual LGBTQ festival in the world has been a pioneer of queer arts and culture for over 20 years. An inspiration for other queer festivals across the globe, HOT! Festival offers an artistic refuge to so many passionate voices in our community.

DIXON PLACE, a laboratory for artists since 1986, is dedicated to supporting the creative process by presenting original works of theater, dance, music, puppetry, circus arts, literature & visual art at all stages of development. Challenging artists and audiences, this local haven encourages and inspires artists of all stripes and callings, and places special emphasis on the needs of women, people of color, seniors, youth and LGBTQ artists. Dixon Place is located at 161A Chrystie Street, Lower East Side, NYC.

Exhibition curators: Beck Feibelman and PJ Gubatina Policarpio

Restrictions: Original works on paper, photography, paintings, and mixed media works are eligible.

Key dates:

Submission deadline: June 14, 2015

Exhibition dates: July – August 2015

Opening reception: TBD

Submission info: To be considered for this exhibition, email images of original art, portfolio or website to: pjpolicarpio@gmail.com by June 14, 2015.

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Editor’s Note: While ArtMuseumTeaching.com is typically not a space for Event Postings, Calls for Papers, Calls for Artists, or Job Postings, I wanted to share this Open Call for Artists from AMT contributor PJ Policarpio.  PJ was involved in the first-ever Museum Teaching Throwdown, an amazingly high energy event back in 2014 which brought together about 80 museum educators around ideas of experimentation and risk-taking.  PJ’s artistic and professional practices span across the arts and culture sector, including work with the Brooklyn Museum and Queens Museum.  His drive to curate and pull together projects like Visualizing Queerness and the exhibition at this year’s HOT! Festival is inspiring, and worth supporting and sharing through the ArtMuseumTeaching community.  Please share this with any LGBTQ artists that you have connections with, or, if you are in New York in July and August, I invite you to attend this exhibition.