OPEN CALL
30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
14 September–24 November 2013
International Centre of Graphic Arts, Pod turnom 3, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
DEADLINE: Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 5 pm
ELIGIBLE
All artists currently residing in Southeastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia).
ABOUT
The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana will highlight some of the evolutions the graphic field has undergone in contemporary times. Print processes, broadly defined here as methods that use a process of transference (that often involve a matrix which allows for multiple incarnations of any one work), have expanded to touch many types of present-day art. While select, traditional media have evolved and adapted to maintain their relevance, others have become primitive formats resigned to oblivion. Still other, newer processes—most notably, digital practices—after a long fermentation, finally seem to have taken a legitimate hold as artistic tools in their own right. This edition will focus on projects that have a renewed, contemporary engagement with traditional means, evolve established processes with fresh applications, or embrace new printerly technologies in high-quality, artistic investigations. In most cases, the techniques employed echo and comment on conditions of the current world in which we live: how we now receive our information, how we interact—or attempt to—with each other, how we (mis)perceive our world. This re-consideration of the graphic as both form and content has invigorated the polygraphic terrain, and links the work of artists from around the world.
CURATOR
Deborah Cullen is a curator of the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. Deborah Cullen, PhD is Director & Chief Curator of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in the City of New York. She served as Chief Curator for El Panal/The Hive: 3ra Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan: América Latina y el Caribe, Puerto Rico (2012).
PRODUCER
The producer of Ljubljana’s Biennial of Graphic Arts is the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) in Ljubljana, a specialized museum for the art of printing, artists’ books and ephemera. If we consider the history of the Ljubljana Biennial from today’s perspective, we could say that one of its greatest assets is that it presented current art from both West and East during the Iron Curtain period. Gradually, as part of the non-aligned policy that was the key pillar of Tito’s Yugoslavia, virtually the entire world took part in it. Artists from the USA, Western Europe and the countries of the Eastern Bloc, as well as – very unusual for the time – artists from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, all exhibited at the Ljubljana Biennial.
In the year 2013 will see the 30th edition of the International Biennial of Graphic Arts, which has, particularly during the last twelve years, refreshed its concept, actualised as well as expanded the field of the graphic arts as a medium, and re-examined its structure time and again.
HOW TO APPLY
Please submit the following:
• a description of the existing project, no more than one page
• a brief resume, no more than 3 pages
• If the work cannot be produced without funding, please submit a detailed budget request.
• up to 10 JPGs, including the proposed project and previous, recent work to which it relates (please send images at a low resolution to open quickly)
• an image list (title, year, medium, dimensions, and a 1-sentence description if needed)
(video, audio or other formats may be submitted if relevant, no more than 5 minutes)
NOTE THAT SUBMISSION MATERIALS WILL NOT BE RETURNED—
DO NOT SEND ANY ORIGINAL DOCUMENTATION.
SEND TO: bozidar.zrinski@mglc-lj.si