Submission Deadline
Friday, September 25, 2026 by 11:59pm ET

Thematic Exhibition
Between Flood and Forgetting
[An exhibition in two tides]

There are two ways to be inside a climate crisis. One is practical: the flood has come, the fire has burned, and there is work to be done. The other is emotional: something you loved is gone, and nobody has given you a place to put that grief.

This exhibition is concerned with both ways of being. It takes the lived experience of climate change as its subject, not the politics of it, not the science of it, but what it actually feels like to inhabit a world being unmade and remade at the same time. It is an invitation to artists whose work sits inside that experience, in whatever form that takes.

Part 1 – The Flood

The first part of the exhibition looks outward. It begins from the premise that the emergency is already here, and that communities living inside it have already started responding. ‘The Flood’ is focused on that response: new materials, adaptive structures, ways of living invented by people who cannot wait for rescue.

This section is interested in work that looks at the world as it is now and finds people already moving through it differently. Not waiting, not warning, but responding. Work that is rooted in the present tense of the crisis, whatever form that takes, belongs here.

Part 2 – Slow Burn

The second part of the exhibition turns inward. Researchers use the word solastalgia to describe the grief that comes from watching your home environment change around you. It is a particular kind of loss: there is no funeral for a glacier, no ceremony when a species disappears, no public acknowledgment when a landscape you knew as a child becomes something unrecognizable. Grief accumulates quietly, without language, without anyone naming it.

‘Slow Burn’ makes room for that. This section looks for work that is elegiac rather than catastrophic, work that sits with loss rather than demanding something be done about it. This kind of grief does not resolve. What it can do is become something that can be lived with together rather than carried alone. Work that uses disappearance, transformation, or absence as its material. Work that treats ecological grief as a serious and legitimate subject.

A note on approach

This exhibition begins with a simple acknowledgment: that the people who walk through these doors are already aware of the climate crisis. What it is trying to offer is not information, but experience and perspective. Work that moves at that register, that asks visitors to feel something rather than learn something, is exactly what this call is reaching for.

All mediums are welcome. Work that rewards slow looking, that reveals more the longer a visitor stays with it, speaks well to the spirit of the show. This theme is particularly drawn to work that uses materials authentically: found objects, natural materials, things that carry the marks of what has happened to them. If the work speaks to either section, we would love to hear from you.

Call for submissions

We invite submissions from artists and designers working in all mediums and formats.

Submissions of existing work or realized projects are preferred; however, we will consider submissions of new work and speculative projects.

The exhibition runs January 22 – April 18, 2027 (dates TBC), as part of the DesignTO Festival, January 22 – 31, 2027, and is co-presented with the Textile Museum of Canada.

All submissions must include the following:

• A description of the project or work (max. 150 words) — please be sure to include the following details: title, materials/format, dimensions, year;
• A description of how your object or work connects to the exhibition theme (max 300 words);
• A short bio on you and/or your creative practice (max. 150 words);
• 1-5 images of the project or work (max. 1MB per image); and
• Your
  • contact info (name, email, phone number, mailing address),
  • CV, and
  • website URL (if available).

Deadline

Submissions are due Friday, September 25, 2026 by 11:59pm ET.