Hello, friends—
I tend to visualize goings-on in life as a constantly evolving Venn diagram with numerous overlapping regions of various proportions—some are regions within regions. There’s the work-life balance, for example (what is that in art, though, one must ask?!) that often strikes me as two large bubbles with lots of overlap. Things like family time, holidays and rest time, or hobbies have their own zones, often colliding. Then within work, there are of course numerous revolving projects like exhibitions, writing deadlines, or trips and other events.
When things get too hectic—the unexpected always happens—I imagine all of the bubbles squeezing together, pushing in on one another with a pressure that, if it builds too much, the only release is a burst. That burst I equate to burnout, which I’ve been through more than once in the past few years and probably why I have developed this way of looking at it. The Venn diagram idea—in the past I’ve also thought of it as a pie chart—is one way I’ve learned to take stock of how many things are orbiting around and what I have the capacity to tend to.
One of my friends has a tattoo on her arm derived from a phrase her grandmother would often say: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. When you live by these words, it’s a gut-wrenching feeling to know that you’re too stretched or overcommitted to be able to do any of those things well. No one wants to paint a “passable” painting or write an “alright” article.
Compromise is part of the package, though. For example, when there’s a big show coming up, other things need to take a back seat for a few weeks. Or when the schedule feels more calm, there’s an opportunity to work on something you may have been putting off, rather than layering something entirely new—only to keep putting that off.
For me, springtime is always the biggest test of this method… if it’s really a method at all. As much as I love wandering through galleries or researching for my writing, I also want to be in a tent in the woods, hiking in the mountains, or shooting the shit with my sisters on the weekend. I want to dig my hands into garden soil or hang out around a fire with my friends. All of this takes time and has “nothing” to do with art or my work in that sphere. And yet, of course, it has everything to do with being able to keep working.
Without giving attention to those other bubbles, work can eat everything up. Just like not giving attention to work means other scenarios, which could have been relaxing, are coiled with anxiety. Stepping back and trying to view the whole picture and how parts relate to one another can be helpful for an occasional recalibration when anything feels like it’s taking up more time or energy than it should.
I’d love to know your methods for rebalancing or grasping a hectic workload. Feel free to comment below! And of course, see you all again next week. Thanks so much for reading.
—Kate
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What you’ll find below:
Featured artist: Jure Kastelic in Venice
A Young Space exhibition: Desire Lines
Four exhibitions on view this week in Brussels, London, Paris, and San Francisco
Sixteen opportunities for artists with deadlines coming up soon
Featured Artist: Jure Kastelic
Jure Kastelic draws on the tradition of memento mori in a series of new paintings on view in Venice with Mare Karina. Conceived around the notion of opposing forces and societal discourse today, the exhibition taps into ideas around desire, wealth, and perceptions of value.
Kastelic’s work, and the theme, brings to mind elements of vanitas still lifes, symbolically packed with reminders that life is short, wealth means nothing, and grasping for power or glory is futile in the face the ever-looming inevitability of one’s demise. The artist examines how myths and art historical examples relate to a contemporary theme of “capitalist realism,” a term coined by Mark Fisher in his book of that title, which posits that neoliberal ideology in pop culture, work, and education is so thoroughly ingrained that, as Fisher wrote, “it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it.”
In Kastelic’s surreal paintings, mirrored spaces, vessels, and angles distort human figures and skeletons, which appear to visit from a more romantic or mythologized past. The shows’s title, All desire is a desire for being, comes from the title of a book by René Girard posits that, as Tadej Vindiš writes in the exhibition text, “our desires are not entirely our own but are instead mirrored by those around us.”
All desire is a desire for being continues until June 30 at Mare Karina, 3200 Campo de le Gate, Venice.
A Young Space Exhibition: Desire Lines
I’m thrilled to be heading to Denver in a few weeks to install Desire Lines, a four-person group show curated in collaboration with David B. Smith Gallery, spanning the main space and the gallery’s project room.
For Miguel Arzabe, Jessica Cannon, Saskia Fleishman, and Michelle A M Miller (pictured), landscape takes literal, metaphorical, and metaphysical forms. Themes of heritage, memory, space, and movement coalesce in a grouping in which each artist finds themselves on some kind of journey. Whether recycling organic matter to produce drawing materials, exploring one’s own thoughts and impulses, calling on snapshots from travels, or delving into ancestral and cultural traditions, the terrain investigated here manifests as an array of conduits to new perspectives.
The exhibition opens on Saturday, May 25, with an opening reception the following Saturday, June 1, from 5-8pm. If you’re in the area, artists will be in attendance, and we’d love to see you!
See more on the gallery’s website.
Exhibitions
PARIS | WHITE CUBE
Alia Ahmad: Terhal Gheim / ترحال غيم (The voyage of clouds)
This stunning group of paintings and watercolors by Riyadh-based Alia Ahmad takes the desert plateau of Saudi Arabia’s capital as a starting point in her exploration of nomadic Bedouin tribes’ abundant cultural traditions of storytelling and weaving.
Runs through May 11
BRUSSELS | SUPER DAKOTA
Thom Trojanowski: A Tree: My Favourite Life So Far
Thom Trojanowski’s idiosyncratic depictions of insects, trees, and humans communing with nature are central in this show that draws on a breadth of motifs the artist often employs, like tree stumps and insects, including some fantastic ceramic elements.
Runs through May 25
SAN FRANCISCO | BASS & REINER
Bec Imrich: Tin Cry
Rendered in graphite and accessorized with metallic elements, Bec Imrich’s mixed-media pieces toy with perceptions of flatness and depth, familiarity and the uncanny.
Runs through May 25
LONDON | HUXLEY PARLOUR
Molly Greene: Pseudopodia
Pseudopodia is a phenomenon in amoeboid cells in which a temporary protrusion stretches out from the main form in order to feed and move. Molly Greene runs with this concept of amorphous motion and transmutation in a new suite of eight paintings in her solo show at Huxley Parlour.
Runs through May 25
Artist Opportunities
Young Space emphasizes fully-funded opportunities with low or no entry fees and programs that focus on creative and professional development for visual artists. Deadlines are coming up soon to apply for these grants, fellowships, residencies, and more.
MONOM Art Prize for Visual Arts Students in Germany
Deadline: May 2
The MONOM Art Prize is aimed at students at a state art college in Germany at the end of their studies. The prize serves to support art students in the transition to independent artistic practice. This year, three prizes totaling €9,000 will be awarded.
Submission fee: none
Wassaic Project Winter Residencies
Deadline: May 6
Winter residents receive 24-hour access to an adaptable, semi-private, ~100 square-foot studio space in the historic Maxon Mills in Wassaic, New York. Accommodations include a private bedroom in a shared house, complete with common spaces, 1–2 full bathrooms, and a kitchen (artists participating in the Family Residency will receive a private house). After subsidies from grants and other funding, the artist's contribution for the residency is $600 for every 4-week period, with possible access to fellowships and need-based assistance on a case-by-case basis.
Submission fee: $25
PRAKSIS Oslo Residency 29: For real?
Deadline: May 7
Developed with artist Harold Offeh, residency 29 For real? addresses ideas of authenticity and identity in art and society. For this residency, Harold Offeh is seeking to convene an internationally diverse group of practitioners, individuals or collective members who will bring a range of critical and practical approaches to concepts of authenticity. The residency provides an active, facilitated program connected with the residency topic; a communal work space at PRAKSIS in the centre of Oslo; a stipend of €700 (€25 per day) plus a travel bursary for four residents based in the E.U. outside of Norway; 3,000 NOK awarded to one international artist from outside of the E.U.; comfortable shared accommodation for non-Oslo based residents (Oslo-based residents will continue to stay at their local address); and group dinners with invited guests.
Submission fee: none
Grand Plan £1,000 Grants for Artists of Color in the U.K.
Deadline: May 7
Grand Plan is a fund run by creatives, for creatives, that awards £1,000 grants to artists and creative people of color. The award can cover the cost of equipment, courses, your time, materials, travel, and whatever your project needs. Grand Plan funds proposals for which £1,000 covers the majority of the cost.
Submission fee: none
Research and Work Scholarship—City of Cologne
Deadline: May 8
The Research and Work Scholarship grants are offered irrespective of age and are aimed at professionally working Cologne artists and curators. Fifteen research and work scholarships are endowed with €5,000 each, paid in two installments.
Submission fee: none
More Art Engaging Artists Fellowship
Deadline: May 10
More Art’s year-long (August 2024 to July 2025) Engaging Artists Fellowship is designed to help emerging NYC artists and community organizers develop and sustain a socially engaged and public art practice. The Fellowship program curriculum includes mentorship, peer feedback, community building, workshops, and artist talks tailored to the interests/needs of the cohort, and access to programming opportunities in New York City. At the end of the year, Fellows can expect to receive a small stipend of at least $250 each (each member of a collective will receive a stipend) to be used for expenses related to their practice.
Submission fee: none
Fluxus Art Projects Open Call for Exhibition Projects and Curatorial Research Trips
Deadline: May 10
Fluxus Art Projects finances projects that promote the contemporary French art scene in the U.K. and the contemporary British art scene in France. It supports exhibitions and curatorial residencies. Projects potentially supported by Fluxus Art Projects must be: contemporary art projects by France-based or French and/or U.K.-based or British artists or curators; examples of active and fruitful collaborations between the art sectors in France and the United Kingdom; and affiliated to visual arts.
Submission fee: none
Art Hub Copenhagen Residency To Go
Deadline: May 12
Residency To Go is a six-month program with a focus on artistic development, which takes place in the visual artist’s own studio. The program therefore does not include a studio space, but is for artists who want support to develop and qualify their practice and network. The program is dedicated to artists who live outside the urban area of Copenhagen (in Danish: Storkøbenhavn). Residency To Go 2024-25 runs from October 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, and a total of three visual artists will be selected. Participants receive subject-specific workshops, studio visits, DKK 21,000 monthly fee, and other possibilities.
Submission fee: none
Open Call for Chicago Cultural Center Exhibition Proposals
Deadline: May 13
The City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) exhibition program encompasses historic as well as contemporary art worldwide, with special emphasis placed on emerging and underrepresented artists who live and work in Chicago. DCASE is pleased to introduce a new application process for artists, curators, and arts organizations to propose exhibitions for the Chicago Cultural Center galleries in 2025 and 2026. Individual exhibition budgets are based on size and scope and range widely – typically from $10,000 for a small one person show to $80,000 for complex and large exhibitions.
Submission fee: none
Nicholson Project Artist Residency Program
Deadline: May 13
The program welcomes emerging, mid-career, and established visual artists and designers, but also dancers, poets/writers, makers, chefs, gardeners, architects, engineers, and scientists. Open to all local and national artists, but focus is on BIPOC artists and those who live in or have ties to Southeast Washington, D.C. Participants receive a 10-week Artist Residency at The Nicholson Project, a $5,000 artist stipend, and more.
Submission fee: none
Asian American Arts Alliance Bandung Residency 2024-25
Deadline: May 14
The Bandung 2024-25 Residency, presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) and The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), is an opportunity designed to uplift the work of organizers, artists, educators, and waymakers whose practice is intended to foster solidarity between Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Black communities. For this residency, 7 to 10 NYC-based visionaries will be selected as residents by a panel of independent reviewers to participate in a year-long hybrid program. The residency is open to residents of the 5 boroughs of New York, and artists receive a stipend of $3,000. Housing is not included.
Submission fee: none
Tennessee Arts Commission Arts Access Mini-Grant
Deadline: May 15
This grant category offers grant funding for Professional Fees and Supplies for arts projects which focus on increasing access to underserved and underrepresented people which may include ethnic groups, people with disabilities, people aged 60 years and older, and active-duty military/veterans and their families. The Commission awards Arts Access Mini-Grants in amounts up to $2,000.
Submission fee: none
Royal Ontario Museum IARTS Textiles of India Grant
Deadline: May 15
The IARTS Textiles of India Grant supports a project on Indian textile arts. This biennial grant of $15,000 CAD can be used anywhere in the world by anyone in the world toward a project that enhances knowledge about Indian textiles, dress, or costume. Applicants can include scholars, curators, educators, community leaders, artists and enthusiasts. Projects can be research-based or creative, and must further the preservation, documentation, encouragement, improvement, interpretation, or revival of Indian textile arts.
Submission fee: none
Three Women’s Studio Workshop Residency Opportunities
Deadline: May 15
Parent Residency Grant
The Parent Grant is a four-week residency for an artist with at least one dependent child under the age of 18. Artists may choose to work in any of the following studio disciplines: intaglio, letterpress, papermaking, screenprinting, photography, or ceramics. This grant includes a $1450 unrestricted stipend that can be used for childcare or other costs at the artist’s discretion, up to $250 for travel costs, free onsite housing, and 24/7 studio access.
Studio Workspace Residency
The Studio Workspace Residency is an opportunity for artists to create new work and fully immerse themselves in WSW’s supportive environment. We invite applications from artists at any stage of their careers. Artists may choose to work in any one or more studios: intaglio, letterpress, papermaking, screenprinting, darkroom photography, or ceramics. All workspace residencies are fully subsidized. Artists are responsible for their own travel, materials, meals, and other personal incidentals while in residence, while WSW provides housing and studio space at no cost.
Art-in-Ed Workspace Residency
The Art-in-Education (AIE) Workspace Residency is for artists interested in working with local school students while creating their own work in WSW’s supportive and immersive environment. This is an opportunity for artists with a range of teaching experience, from seasoned teachers and professors, to those with minimal experience and an interest in gaining skills and knowledge. All workspace residencies are fully subsidized. Artists are responsible for their own travel, materials, meals, and other personal incidentals while in residence, while WSW provides housing and studio space at no cost.
Submission fee: none
If your organization hosts valuable opportunities for artists and you’d like to learn more about featuring it in this digest and on Instagram, I’d love to hear from you! Reply to this email to inquire or check out yngspc.com/sponsor.
See all opportunities
Paid subscribers can access a full list of all current opportunities, including many that are further in the future or that don’t even make it into the digest on time! The list is updated several times each week.
Whether you’re a free or paid subscriber, can also browse through listings in earlier digests in the archive, which are opened up to all subscribers after two weeks.
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