Open Call: Third Space Is a Verb
Diaspora is often understood as a condition of in-betweenness, a space located between cultures, geographies, and identities. This exhibition’s open call challenges that assumption. It proposes that identity is not a fixed position, but an active process that is constantly constructed, negotiated, and performed through everyday gestures, language, memory, and material practices.
Here, the third space operates as a condition in which artists become active producers of new cultural identities. Hybridity becomes a method, not a label. Belonging is sculpted rather than inherited. This open call invites artists from across the world who approach identity as something always in flux, moving, shifting, and responding.
We are interested in works that move beyond representation and instead function as sites of making, through experimentation, resistance, translation, and transformation, where identity is not described as a condition, but enacted.
Deadline
July 15, 2026 23:59 EST
Submission Fee
$5
Guest Jury Judges
Matilda Berke
Oorja Garg
Abhishek Tuiwala
Eligibility
Open to all artists 18 years and older from all over the world.
All visual art media will be considered.
Artwork must be original. Artists are responsible for copyright compliance.
Submit
- Up to 3 images and/ or 1 video.
- Brief bio and artist statement
- CV
- Portfolio/ website
- Instagram handle
Submitted images should be renamed as follows
Firstname_Lastname_Title_Medium_Dimensions_Year. jpeg
Jpeg files should not exceed 1MB. Selected artists will be contacted for high-resolution images.
For video submissions, time-based or kinetic artwork can be presented in videos limited to 2 minutes. For security reasons, we cannot access sites with passwords or download attachments from the web.
We do not accept submissions via email.
Timeline
- Submissions will be accepted until July 15, 2026 23:59 EST
- Selected artists will be notified by July 31, 2026
- Exhibition opens on August 15, 2026
- Exhibition closes on September 15, 2026
About Jury
MATILDA LIN BERKE
Matilda Lin Berke is a New Yorker from Pasadena, California. She has written theory and criticism for publications including Purple Fashion Magazine, Mutt Art Review, the Brooklyn Rail, Impulse Magazine, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, Filmmaker Magazine, Spike Art Magazine, and The Whitney Review. She teaches at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn and has also published fiction and poetry. Her second short film premiered at Olney Gleason.
Website/portfolio: matildalinberke.neocities.org
OORJA GARG
Oorja Garg is a curator currently based between New York and New Delhi. Her practice moves between research, exhibition-making, and critical writing, foregrounding speculation, archives, and play as curatorial methods. She examines how contemporary art engages science, fiction, games, and popular culture to question dominant narratives of technology, identity, and history. Garg holds dual master’s degrees in Curatorial Practice from the School of Visual Arts and in Art History from the MS University of Baroda.
IG: https://www.instagram.com/oorjag/
ABHISHEK TUIWALA
Abhishek Tuiwala is a conceptual artist whose practice spans sculpture and drawing, working primarily with metal, wood, marble, and graphite. His work engages with material as both substance and metaphor, exploring tensions between industry and nature, structure and elasticity, and inherited systems of labor and production. His inquiry is informed by his proximity to Surat, where his family has long been involved in the manufacturing of elastic, creating a personal and industrial framework that continues to shape his conceptual approach.
His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including Gallery LVS (Seoul), the Raza Foundation (New Delhi), L’Space Gallery (New York), Aicon Gallery (New York), Swivel Gallery (New York), Dinner Gallery (New York), Mana Contemporary (New Jersey), the International Sculpture Center
(New Jersey), and the India Art Fair (New Delhi). Tuiwala has received the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship for his large-scale graphite drawings, the Rema Hort Mann Artist Community Engagement Grant, the Stutzman Foundation Award for Sculpture, and awards from the Bombay Art
Society and the Hyderabad Art Society.Based between India and the United States, Tuiwala maintains a studio at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, where he continues to expand his practice through material experimentation and conceptual inquiry.
Website/portfolio: https://www.abhishektuiwala.com
(text&photo courtesy of the jurors)
Contact
If you have any questions regarding the submission process, please reach out to info@litanggallery.com.
*Li Tang Gallery Disclaimer
The Li Tang Gallery team will not be involved in any sales related to the Materiality Unleashed International Juried Exhibition. All sales inquiries will be redirected to the respective selected artists, who will handle all transactions independently.
Additionally, the Li Tang Gallery team kindly requests permission from the selected artists to utilize their artwork images for promotional purposes. We understand the importance of respecting artists’ rights and will ensure proper accreditation and permissions are obtained.
Li Tang Gallery 