Organizer Information
The open call is organized by The Starving Artist Initiative, an independent, artist-led platform dedicated to supporting creative practitioners through accessible exhibition and publication opportunities. The initiative operates with a strong emphasis on inclusivity, storytelling, and the amplification of underrepresented voices within contemporary art discourse. Its programming typically focuses on socially engaged themes, encouraging artists to reflect on lived experience, collective memory, and cultural systems that shape everyday life.
The Starving Artist Initiative positions itself as both a curatorial and community-driven project space rather than a traditional institution. It prioritizes low-barrier entry models, often eliminating participation fees and promoting global accessibility for emerging and established artists alike. Through its exhibitions and publications, the organization seeks to document diverse artistic responses to pressing socio-political and ecological issues, with a particular focus on material culture, human relationships, and systems of care.
Title & Description
Home Grown – The Starving Artist Open Call (Exhibition & Publication)
Home Grown is an international open call for an exhibition and publication exploring the complex and intimate relationships between food, land, labour, memory, and collective agricultural heritage. The project investigates how food is not only consumed as sustenance, but also produced, shared, withheld, remembered, and politicized across different cultural and ecological contexts.
The curatorial framework centers on “voices from production, consumption + care in food systems,” emphasizing the lived realities embedded in agricultural and domestic practices. Artists, writers, and creative practitioners are invited to critically engage with questions of food justice, ecological knowledge, inherited traditions, and everyday acts of nourishment.
The exhibition seeks to foreground food as a multidimensional subject: a carrier of memory, a site of labour, a marker of identity, and a medium of resistance and care. Contributions may explore farming practices, cooking traditions, harvesting processes, and the invisible infrastructures that sustain communities. The project also highlights oral histories, recipes, and personal narratives as valid and powerful forms of artistic expression.
Categories
- Visual Art (Painting, Drawing, Illustration)
- Sculpture and Installation (submitted via documentation/images)
- Photography and Digital Art
- Mixed Media and Collage
- Video Art and Animation (submitted as stills or links)
- Performance Art (documented submissions)
- Interactive and Experimental Practices
- Writing, Poetry, and Literary Work
- Oral Histories, Recipes, and Narrative-Based Works
Eligibility
- Open to international applicants worldwide
- Artists must be 13 years or older
- Suitable for emerging, mid-career, and established practitioners
- Open to visual artists, writers, researchers, and interdisciplinary creators
- No restrictions based on nationality, background, or professional status
- Special encouragement for practitioners working with food systems, ecology, memory, and cultural heritage
Program Benefits & Awards
- Inclusion in an international exhibition (online and/or in-person format, location TBC)
- Publication of selected works in the official Home Grown publication
- Global visibility through The Starving Artist’s digital platforms and promotional channels
- Archival documentation of work within an ongoing curatorial project
- Each artist will receive a digital download of the publication
There is no monetary compensation, and no sales commission structure is specified. The focus is on visibility, publication, and curatorial inclusion.
Application Fee
None
Application Requirements
- Up to 10 artworks or projects
- Visual documentation (images for all mediums; video links or stills for time-based work)
- Basic personal information
- Short project descriptions or captions
- Optional written contributions (strongly encouraged for recipes, oral histories, or storytelling-based works)
Additional emphasis is placed on:
- Narrative context behind the work
- Relevance to food systems, agriculture, and collective memory
- Clarity in documentation for exhibition and publication use
How to Apply?
Online Application
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 30 June 2026
Location
Online
Additional Details
- The call strongly encourages exploration of food-related narratives, including farming equity, consumption realities, and collective agricultural heritage.
- Special focus is placed on stories, recipes, and oral histories, positioning them as central artistic contributions rather than supplementary material.
- AI-generated content is explicitly not permitted.
- Submitted works may be used for marketing, publication, exhibition display, and promotional materials indefinitely, unless otherwise agreed.
- Artists retain authorship, but grant The Starving Artist Initiative non-exclusive rights for reproduction and curatorial use.
- The project emphasizes ethical accessibility but does not offer financial compensation or physical artwork return logistics.