Once Upon a Queer
open call
Deadline for applications — January 9, 2022

Izolyatsia. Platform for cultural initiatives (Kyiv, Ukraine) and Galeria Labirynt (Lublin, Poland) announce open-call for Ukrainian and Polish artists to take part in the project Once upon a queer.

Multidisciplinary project Once upon a queer unites contemporary visual art, performance art, journalism, and queer studies. The project aims to raise the level of conversense of the Ukrainian audience about queer history in Eastern Europe, in particular in Ukraine. Episodic exhibitions, short-term educational programs, rarely published research in the absence of a stable archive slow down the development of tolerance in our society.

Once upon a queer unites online exhibition, web-platform for quick and comfortable access to project’s materials and also the series of public educational events. We look for artists who are able to get through intolerance and barriers of stereotypes with the help of universal art language. Every selected participant will have the possibility to prepare a video on the topics of queer history, gender identity, rights LGBTQ+ within society.

Videos will be presented as an online series on the media platforms in Ukraine and Poland. They will be archived on the website of the project later on. As a result of the open call 10 artists (5 Ukrainian and 5 Polish) will be selected to have a possibility to implement their idea in the format of video work.

Each participant will have the possibility to get a consultation with curators and specialist in gender studies and queer history and will receive a fee of Euro 1000 gross

The project will be implemented through January — May, 2022.

The project was initiated by Alina Kleytman.

Inspirator and name of the project: Oleksandr Halishchuk

Curatorial group: Alina Kleytman, Kateryna Filyuk, Waldemar Tatarczuk and Karol Radziszewski.

Applications for the residencies should consist of the participant’s portfolio, as well as a short description of the idea of video work referring to a historical episode of queer history in your country (up to 400 words) that you would like to create within the project. All documents should be sent in English to opencall@izolyatsia.org . Please indicate your Name and Surname in the topic of the letter as well as in all the joined files.

Deadline for applications — January 9, 2022

About project’s organisers:

IZOLYATSIA is a non-profit, non-governmental platform for cultural initiatives, founded in 2010. Its mission is to effect systemic change in Ukrainian society through the agency of cultural projects.

Galeria Labirynt is a modern municipal cultural institution focused on art. The mission of the gallery is to follow the pulse of modern art, to notice its most interesting phenomena, and to discover important contexts.

About project’s partner:

The Queer Archives Institute is a non-profit artist-run organisation dedicated to research, collection, digitalisation, presentation, exhibition, analysis and artistic interpretation of queer archives, with special focus on Central and Eastern Europe.

Once upon a queer is supported by the European Union and Goethe-Institut under the House of Europe programme.