Call For Artists: ABOLITION NOW! at Asian Arts Initiative

Summer 2019: ABOLITION NOW! 
June 3, 2019 – August 16, 2019 
Submission Deadline: March 8, 2019 

How do policing, prisons, and detention affect marginalized communities? What stakes do Asian Americans have in abolition? What is restorative and transformative justice in practice? What does an abolitionist future look like, and how do we get there? 

Japanese American internment, racial profiling of Muslim people, and deportations of Southeast Asian immigrants are just a few of the ways that Asian American communities experience police violence, incarceration, detention, and deportation. Abolition asks us to imagine a world without policing, prisons, and other forms of state-sponsored violence against black and brown communities. On an interpersonal level, abolition asks us to rethink the ways that we address harm in intimate and societal relationships. 

Asian Arts Initiative is seeking visual artists to explore, disrupt, think through, respond to this topic of ABOLITION NOW! with us. 

We invite you to submit existing artwork, and/or propose the creation of new artwork. Submissions will be reviewed by a panel consisting of Asian Arts Initiative staff and board, and selected submissions will be notified in April 2019. 

All artists will be compensated according to a payment scale adapted from Working Artists for the Greater Economy. 

Please visit Asian Arts Initiative's website for more information and to apply. If you have any questions, please contact Melissa at melissa@asianartsinitiative.org.