Biennial call for artists

Oregon Contemporary's 2024 Biennial will be curated by Jackie Im and Anuradha Vikram .

Oregon Contemporary is now accepting applications for the 2024 Biennial curated by Jackie Im and Anuradha Vikram. The Biennial is a survey of works by visual and performing artists who are defining and advancing Oregon’s contemporary art landscape. This will be the seventh Biennial in Oregon Contemporary’s series of biennials that began in 2010. The 2024 Biennial will be focused on curatorial themes of networks, community, care, and support. Rather than a hierarchical approach to artists' works, the goal is to present work that is timely and relevant to the communities of Oregon.

In conjunction with the biennial exhibition, Oregon Contemporary will host ?a series of programs and performances over the spring of 2024. Our 5000 square foot space serves as the key venue for the Biennial and satellite programming locations may be selected by the curatorial team.

Selected artists will receive a stipend to create new work for the exhibition. To be eligible for consideration in the Biennial, artists must have lived in Oregon as a primary residence for the last two years. Artists are welcome to apply through CaFE to be considered for a studio visit by Biennial Curators.

Deadline for submissions is March 3 at midnight.

Apply here

What are the networks we use to provide care to each other and to ourselves? As we learn to live with COVID-19, climate change, economic precarity, we are also learning the systems through which we can find support and aid. Networks such as family, friends, community groups and many more make up these formal and informal systems of care and support.

The 2024 Portland Biennial will take as its starting point these very networks that strive to provide care and connection. We look towards gestures of kinship and community to guide the process and our relationships with artists and community.

Oregon has a rich history of collectivity and mutual aid and an equally important history of exclusion, including redlining laws and covenants that prevented communities of color from owning property in desirable areas. Today, Oregonians may find themselves living among diversity but with parallel lives to those around them. Building on the theme of networks, by expanding our footprint beyond the walls of Oregon Contemporary into other venues, other neighborhoods, and public space we will work to build a new network of creativity in convergence for the 2024 Biennial.

Apply here