NOTE: The deadline has passed for submissions.
Check out the results here.
Open call for visual art by LGBTQIA people creatively responding to the prompt:
Queer and Trans Flesh: A Divine Encounter
- experienced through acts of queer care; or
- strange intimacies; or
- pleasurable encounters; or
- fierce survival; or
- tending life in the ruins; or
- unsettling oppressive untruths; or
- courageous love; or
- radical solidarity
As we celebrate the deep and rich history of queer and trans uprisings, acknowledge and turn from the failures of solidarity within the community, and reach together for a new future free from white supremacy, transphobia, religious persecution, poverty, ableism, capitalism, and other destructive forms of supremacy, our very lives become sources of potential for Divine Encounters.
In service to our collective need for spiritual nourishment and sustenance for long-term commitment to justice, and with hopes of remembering our courage, our histories of wisdom, and the Sacred possibilities of a future queered, we extend an invitation for submissions to a Queer Vita Divina (Divine Life) Project.
Based off of the Lectio Divina / Visio Divina tradition, this project will invite participants to use images of queer and trans life as a source of prayer and meditation – online and in print. Your contributions will help spiritually nourish queer and trans people – and all who open themselves to the queer ways of love and justice – in this transformative time.
Art pieces will be accepted through June 30th through this form with hopes to make the project public later this summer. In order to submit a contribution, you need not think of yourself as an artist. We are looking for meaning, depth, and expression. We want to feel when encountering the piece. We want you to feel when creating the piece.
While many submissions may be selected for online use, a small number will also be chosen for the print version of this project for which $100 will be awarded.
We hope your labor in this project may be a meaningful and spiritually nourishing practice of your own whether or not your submission is selected. Your participation will be a gracious contribution to the community, to our need to remember each other, our power, our love, our collective responsibility to life, and the Divine glory that is revealed in and through our lives.
Guidelines:
- Mediums may include but are not limited to:
- collage, paint, photography, drawing, graphic design, or any other medium that can easily shine in picture form.
- Artists should ensure the pieces – or photos of the pieces – have the following dimensions:
- 2.75 in (width) x 4.75 in (height) – or a larger version of that exact ratio
- Please ensure your submission is high resolution. Unintentionally blurry photos cannot be used.
- Individuals may submit more than one piece
- Art may be abstract or concrete, it may have explicit queer expression, or implicit queer themes and meaning
- We encourage minimal to no use of words
- Art must be original
- Permission must be granted for enfleshed to display, reproduce, distribute, and minimally modify the content for branding and consistency in the Vita Divina Project. This is not a for-profit project. Any funds acquired through sale of the printed version will simply be used to cover the cost of creation and shipping.
FAQ
- Would I need to relinquish the rights to my art – my own right to sell and reproduce?
- No. While we ask for permissions to display, reproduce, and distribute the content through enfleshed’s Vita Divina Project, we have no need to restrict your ongoing relationship to your art. You retain the rights to your piece.
- I have to identify with Christianity to participate?
- Not at all! We savor expansive understandings and interpretations of the Sacred. While many who benefit from the project may be Christian-adjacent, submissions of all faith, spiritual, religious, moral backgrounds are welcome.
- Do I have to be LGBTQIA to contribute?
- While we hope that people of all sexualities and genders will find the results of this project valuable, nourishing, and compelling, we do desire to center queer people in the formation of the project and ask those who are cisgender and heterosexual to support the project by lingering in and learning from how the Divine shelters in queer and trans flesh, by sharing this invitation, and/or by donating to enfleshed to support this project here.
- Are there any prohibitions on the content?
- Contributions that are in any way racist, sexist, transphobic, queerphobic, classist, ageist, ableist, fatphobic, or otherwise offensive will not be used in the project.
- We encourage authentic expressions which welcome the meaningfully scandalous, strange, or provocative.
- Where do I submit?
- Submissions are closed. Check back later for the release of the project!
- Questions can be directed to info@enfleshed.com
enfleshed creates and facilities spiritual resources for collective liberation. You can learn more about our values and practices here.