States of Exposure

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– Open Call for Artists

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Deadline: 20 June 2026

Exhibition Dates: 1-30 July  2026

 

SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN!

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CISTA ARTS invites artists worldwide to submit work for States of Exposure, an online group exhibition exploring visibility, vulnerability, revelation, and the shifting conditions through which contemporary experience is negotiated.​​

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States of Exposure explores visibility, vulnerability, pressure, and revelation across personal, social, environmental, and material conditions. 
The exhibition invites artists to consider exposure not simply as disclosure, but as a shifting state that can illuminate, unsettle, transform, or destabilise. 

Open to broad interpretations and all visual media, the exhibition welcomes works engaging with presence, concealment, fragility, tension, endurance, and the changing conditions of contemporary experience.
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Exposure is often associated with visibility — with bringing something into the light. Yet exposure can also unsettle, exhaust, intensify, or transform. It may reveal what was hidden, but it can equally leave things vulnerable, unstable, or altered beyond recognition. States of Exposure brings together works that engage with conditions of openness, pressure, and revelation across personal, material, environmental, and social dimensions.  The exhibition considers exposure not as a singular moment, but as an ongoing state: a condition through which bodies, landscapes, memories, systems, and identities are continually shaped and reshaped. Within the heightened atmosphere of contemporary life — marked by constant visibility, accelerated circulation, ecological precarity, and emotional intensity — exposure becomes both unavoidable and unevenly experienced.  Some forms of exposure produce connection and recognition; others generate fragility, surveillance, displacement, or fatigue. Between concealment and disclosure, protection and vulnerability, the works in this exhibition trace the unstable boundaries through which experience is negotiated. Artists are invited to approach the theme expansively. 
Exposure may emerge through material deterioration, fragmented narratives, atmospheric tension, digital mediation, bodily presence, political realities, architectural space, or shifting environmental conditions.  It may appear in acts of resistance and endurance, or in quieter gestures of intimacy, sensitivity, and perception. Rather than offering resolution, States of Exposure dwells within conditions of uncertainty and transition. It attends to what surfaces under pressure, what remains visible after rupture, and what continues to insist on presence despite erasure, saturation, or concealment.

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We look forward to receiving your inspiring contributions.

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– Submission Guidelines

 

Deadline: 20 June 2026

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We are keen to learn about you! Please send us the following information, along with a sample of your work and an up-to-date CV:

• Contact information (full name, email, mobile)

• Details of the artworks (title, size, medium, year, price)

• Artist statement (max 100 words on how your work relates to the theme)

• Short biography (max 100 words, third-person)

• Up to 4 sample images of your work

Please note: Only two artworks per artist will be selected for exhibition.

​Please send your email to info@cistaarts.com and quote ‘States of Exposure' in the subject field.

Or apply via CuratorSpace.

 

– Selected Participants Will Receive:​

• Exhibition of your work on the CISTA ARTS online platform.

• The exhibition will launch in June 2026.

• We will publish a professionally produced paperback catalogue of the exhibition in the UK.

• You will receive a complimentary PDF copy of the exhibition catalogue.

• If your work sells, Cista Arts will take no commission.

• Your work will be featured in our daily social media posts titled 'Meet the Artist' during the exhibition.

• The exhibition will be prominently displayed on our homepage during the exhibition period and will later be archived on the 'Past Exhibitions' page.

• We will tag you in our social media posts, and your website or social media account will be linked to your artworks on our exhibition page. This ensures ongoing promotion for all participating artists during and after the exhibition.

• You will receive a certificate of participation.

 

Apply to this exhibition opportunity is free, if your work is accepted, there will be a £30 fee for one accepted artwork and a £50 fee for two accepted artworks. 

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– PARTICIPATION BENEFITS:
Selected artists will have their work exhibited online for the full month on our homepage, included in a professionally produced printed and digital exhibition catalogue, featured in daily social media promotion under our ‘Meet the Artist’ series, and receive a certificate of participation. CISTA ARTS takes no commission on sales.

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For more information, please get in touch with us at info@cistaarts.com