Short Description:
In celebration of our 15th anniversary, ArquetopiaSUMMER returns as the Metamorphosis Festival — a bold reinvention of our flagship program into an international academic festival and critical residency. This 3-week immersive experience brings together artists-in-residence, local students and professors, and community members, fostering an environment of interdisciplinary inquiry, experimentation, and ethical engagement. Over the past decade and a half, ArquetopiaSUMMER has grown from a critical residency into something larger: a space where knowledge, practice, and dialogue intersect in transformative ways. In the words of Audre Lorde, “Without community, there is no liberation.” It is this belief that has shaped the program’s evolution into a festival—an intentional gathering that celebrates the collective force of learning, creating, and imagining together.
Expanding beyond the studio and classroom, the Metamorphosis Festival actively engages a broader public through open lectures, an exhibition, and events. These public components are designed to spark dialogue and facilitate the exchange of ideas between diverse audiences, reinforcing our commitment to inclusive education and socially engaged art practices. Through this expanded model, the festival becomes a dynamic platform for collective reflection, critical discourse, and transformative encounters across disciplines and communities.
Metamorphosis: ArquetopiaSUMMER Festival 2025 is a summer event dedicated to analyzing material culture as material practice—an approach that makes critical inquiry both tangible and inclusive, accessible to participants across disciplines and experience levels. Framed through Arquetopia’s signature pedagogical model, the program invites participants to explore how artistic and cultural production shape and reflect power, national identity, and ideology.
This year’s edition will expand on concepts related to visual and material culture, consolidated in the 19th century and carried into the 20th, with particular attention to how images and descriptions—including books, prints, illustrations, and other material forms—were used to construct national imaginaries. Participants will reflect on the broader narratives embedded in popular imagery, exploring how novels, everyday objects, and emerging technologies of the time contributed to shaping ideas of nationalism, race, and modernity—both visually and textually. By treating objects and images not merely as historical evidence but as active agents, the festival provides a platform to critically engage with the past and consider its reverberations in contemporary creative practices. Through mentorship, artistic research and experimentation, site-responsive learning, and scholarly dialogue, Metamorphosis: ArquetopiaSUMMER Festival 2025 encourages residents to rethink materiality as a dynamic, embodied way of knowing and making.
CRITICAL METHODOLOGIES
The methodology behind Metamorphosis: ArquetopiaSUMMER Festival 2025 centers on material culture as material practice—an embodied and intuitive approach that invites participants to reconsider the role of artistic and academic practices as forms of inquiry. This model prioritizes process over product, treating creative and scholarly work as dynamic spaces for critical engagement with the world. Rather than viewing objects and images as static artifacts, participants are encouraged to explore them as active agents in the construction of meaning, power, and identification. Informed by Arquetopia’s signature pedagogical model and rooted in interdisciplinary experimentation, this edition highlights material culture as a key tool for understanding how material forms shape ideologies and affect change. The festival emphasizes exploration over certainty, encouraging a hands-on, engaged process that fosters critical thinking. By treating artistic and academic practices as ways of knowing and making, this approach emphasizes how materials—whether objects, images, or texts—hold power in both their production and reception. Participants will explore material culture as material practice—an approach that makes critical inquiry both tangible and inclusive, accessible to participants across disciplines and experience levels, while inviting vulnerability and relationality in creative, artistic, and scholarly work. This approach considers how political desire intersects with the forms and frameworks through which we engage with material culture, from the aestheticization of violence to the roles of cultural institutions in shaping public consciousness. The festival provides space for questioning the role of institutions, inviting participants to reflect on their own ethical responsibilities as artists, academics, and critical thinkers.
OPEN LECTURES, EXHIBITION AND CULTURAL EVENTS
The educational core of Metamorphosis: ArquetopiaSUMMER Festival 2025 revolves around open lectures, an exhibition, and events that highlight material culture as both context and method. These activities encourage interdisciplinary engagement and offer participants opportunities to engage with material culture in dynamic and interactive ways. Through open lectures, master classes, round tables, an exhibition and other cultural events, participants will delve into how 19th-century visual and material culture shaped ideologies of nationalism, race, class, gender and modernity. The program will explore how books, prints, illustrations, and everyday objects acted as active agents in constructing national imaginaries, empowering participants to analyze the ongoing influence of material forms on contemporary political and cultural discourse. The festival’s pedagogical model fosters mutual exchange, encouraging participants to learn through teaching and collaboration. By engaging with mentors, local practitioners, students, professors, and communities, participants will explore how artistic and academic practices interact with broader social and historical dynamics. Public events—including lectures, exhibitions, and dialogues—extend the festival’s reach, promoting interdisciplinary exchange across diverse audiences and reaffirming Arquetopia’s commitment to inclusive, socially engaged education.
The Metamorphosis: ArquetopiaSUMMER Festival 2025 spans three weeks across multiple venues, including BUAP (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla), Universidad para Adultos, the Facultad de Artes Plásticas y Audiovisuales de la BUAP, and various museums in Puebla. This dynamic festival offers a diverse range of academic and artistic activities, creating a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and creative collaboration. The festival fosters an environment of innovative thinking and artistic experimentation, encouraging participants to connect contemporary and historical contexts.
Application Requirements:
Step 1. Send a short, introductory e-mail to info@arquetopia.org containing all of the following:
A. Your current CV, or short summary of your life experience.
B. Artists, photographers, and designers: attach five (5) sample images of your works (JPEG, PNG, or PDF format, 72 dpi, maximum 2 MB each file) and a brief statement attesting that all works are of your own original creation. Your sample images can be of any type of your art works and do not have to be of the same category/technique as the residency program for which you are applying.
Curators, art historians, writers, and researchers: attach five (5) sample texts of your works (3 pages each excerpt) and a brief statement attesting that all works are of your own original creation.
Step 2. Submit your tax-deductible donation of USD $35.00 via the purple “DONATE NOW” module on the right side of this page. Your donation will go toward our local outreach program, “Support Arquetopia Youth Music Scholarship Programs,” and is required to activate and validate your application. (We do not charge an application fee.)
Step 3. Complete and submit your Arquetopia Artist-in-Residence Online Application
Eligibility: We welcome applications from emerging and mid-career artists, designers, photographers, curators, art historians, writers, and researchers age 20 and over
Program Benefits or Awards:
- Entrance to all the activities including lectures, master classes, exhibitions and other cultural events.
- Additionally, the program will feature a public program aimed at engaging with the local artistic community, organized through an open process to connect artists with diverse audiences across various venues. These venues include academic classrooms within a university setting, as well as dialogues and conversations held in an independent gallery and community-based space
- Activities are designed to promote intense creative work and artistic dialogue; therefore, artists allocate self-directed studio hours as part of their weekly schedule
Staff Support:
- Each resident meets weekly with our directorial and curatorial staff for individualized research assistance/resources, project guidance, and group critique
Accommodation:
- Furnished, private bedroom
- 24-hour access to the kitchen for participants to prepare their own meals; meals/food are the participants’ responsibility
- Wireless Internet
- Use of Arquetopia’s residency common spaces including outdoor terraces
- Shared, serviced bathrooms with modern fixtures and showers
- Housekeeping
Studio Workspace:
- 24-hour access to large and bright, shared art studio with generous natural light
- Personal workspace with large table and wall space
- Some tools provided
- On-site darkroom provided for photographers
- Artists bring their own materials and supplies or obtain them locally
Entry Fee: USD $35.00
Location: MÉXICO
Deadline: July 27, 2025
Website link:
https://www.arquetopia.org/metamorphosis-arquetopiasummer
