Call for artists

The transdisciplinary team at Manufactured Ecosystems invites artists to submit proposals for art, performance, or practice-based research projects for an exhibition at the University of Guelph’s Zavitz Gallery at the School of Fine Art and Music (June 1 – August 15, 2025). Manufactured Ecosystems is an international project that explores the potential for nature-based knowledge, techno-knowledge, and imagined knowledge to forecast the future of climate adaptation.

As part of the project, we are developing a physical and online exhibition and an anthology of original fiction featuring digital reproductions of artworks that will emerge from two collaborative arts/science workshops (tentatively June and August, 2024). Selected artists will receive remuneration for attending, and contributing to these workshops that will explore real and imagined climate adaptation technologies. Selected artists will also be provided with a materials stipend, curatorial support, installation assistance, insurance, and artist fees in accordance with CARFAC (Canadian Artists’ Representation / Le Front des artistes canadiens) guidelines.

This project is committed to dismantling barriers to equity, diversity, and inclusion and providing opportunities to equity-deserving groups.

Selected artists will identify one ecosystem service as their subject and will explore the technologies associated with achieving life-sustaining functions. The selected ecosystem services identified for this project are: 

1) Biodiversity: a diverse reservoir of strategies and information

2) Pollination: a distribution system for the purpose of plant reproduction

3) Cultural Services and Human Experience: the components of the human species derived from emersion in the natural world

4) Soil formation: the creation of new soil

5) Photosynthesis: the creation of sugars from sunlight

6) Climate regulation: the stabilizing of climatic conditions

Applicants will be asked to rank their preferences in the application form (see link to form below). 

Manufactured Ecosystems welcomes submissions from artists of all identities (e.g. racialized, Indigenous, disabled, LGBTQ, neurodivergent). If you are comfortable, we encourage artists to indicate their intersections in the application. Disclosure is not a requirement to submit, and we recognize that not all people are safe to disclose their identities.

Proposals are due on April 15, 2024 and will include

Artist statement: - 250 words maximum, (one (1) page, size 12 font),

- Résumé/CV (one (1) page, size 12 font);

Art portfolio: a selection of five (5) examples of your work

Responses should go out by May 15, 2024.

Any questions should be directed to Shoshanah Jacobs at sjacob04@uoguelph.ca