Call for Artist Submissions

Queer Spectra Arts Festival 2025

May 15- May 17

SORENSON UNITY CENTER

1383 S 900 W, Salt Lake City, UT 84104

Transportation: UTA bus line 9 (California Ave / 900 W - Stop ID: 198489900) Plenty of places to chain up bikes and park

 

Festival 2025: Flux & Fracture

“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.”— Maxine Hong Kingston

“Some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don't know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt”— Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds 

“When we speak of systemic change, we need to be fractal.  Fractals— a way to speak of the patterns we see— move from the micro to macro level. The same spirals on sea shells can be found in the shape of galaxies. We must create patterns that cycle upwards. We are microsystems.” — adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

The Queer Spectra Arts Festival is a confluence, an invitation to come together as artists, creatives, and community members. In our times of division and fear, queer spaces are vital to practice expansiveness, participate in generative contradictions, and celebrate fluctuations. As queer creatives, we embrace ruptures and the erosion of barriers to spark queer possibilities. 

One person looks at a gallery of visual art at 2024 Queer Spectra Arts Festival

A person stands looking at a wall filled with visual art from the 2024 Queer Spectra Arts Festival.

As we reflect on Flux & Fracture, we consider: 

Attuning to cycles and the fluctuations within these cycles.  

Fractals – never-ending infinitely complex patterns

Shifting relationships to the self, time, place 

Initiations into new queer traditions, generational practices, shared ceremonies; Rituals that are maintained across time and rituals that are newly created 

K'é: a Diné word meaning system of kinship. Reflecting on connection to community and family. Understanding fractures and moments of breaking away from culture.

Embracing experimental ideas and art practices 

Boundaries, tipping points, and thresholds

Continuous flow and erosion 

The malleability of queerness 

Practices of disruption; rupture and repair for liberation 

The confluence of rivers, specifically the Three Creeks Confluence where Red Butte, Immigration, and Parleys spill into the Jordan River at the same location, one block from the Sorenson Unity Center. 

We invite you to explore the following questions: 

  • How does queerness allow you to imagine new possibilities? 

  • adrienne maree brown asks “Change is coming—what do we need to imagine as we prepare for it?” How does queer art play a role in this change? 

  • How does your relationship to queerness flux and flow?

  • What cycles or fluctuations do you feel connected to or want to feel connected to?

  • What convergences and interconnectivity are you embracing in your life? In your queerness?

  • When have you experienced a flux or a fracture? What was that experience like? How did you recover? What was the same and what had changed?

  • What fractures from tradition, from community, from ancestors do you experience? 

  • What needs to break in order for regeneration to happen?

  • How do you continue rituals? Or create new rituals?

  • How do you hold contradictions in your life? In your art?

  • How can queer art be a source of disruption? How can art reveal and/or heal fractures?

 

Submission Details:

Artists from all disciplines are invited to submit, including those in inter/multidisciplinary fields. Categories include (but are not limited to): 

Categories include (but are not limited to): 

2D visual arts (drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, etc.)

3D art works (sculpture, installation, fashion, etc.)

Time-based arts (dance, theatre, music, comedy, literature, film, drag, performance art, etc.)

Literary Arts (poetry, zines, short stories, literature essays, etc.)

We accept both finished works and works-in-progress. For works-in-progress, in your application, tell us how you plan to complete your work and provide us a detailed timeline.

Two performers dancing, covered in fabric, in a Black Box theater at the 2024 Queer Spectra Arts Festival.

Submissions are due Wednesday, March 12th at 11:59pm MT.

For questions, please contact queerspectra@gmail.com

Additional Information:

Adjudication Committee:

Submitted applications will be reviewed by an adjudication committee. This is a separate group of people from the Queer Spectra Organizing Committee. 

Finished & Work-In-Progress

We accept both finished works and works-in-progress. For works-in-progress, in your application, tell us how you plan to complete your work and provide us a detailed timeline. We also welcome submissions from out of state and outside of the US.

Panel Discussions & Workshops:

We highly encourage submitting artists to consider being a part of our open conversations regarding their work and their queer identity. Panel discussions will focus on topics related to our festival theme, "Flux & Fracture" as part of our mission is to promote a nuanced conversation with audiences about these topics/issues. 

Submission Fee & Financial Support:

Thanks to generous support from our donors, this year’s festival submission fee has been waived! We are also able to provide several artist scholarships this year. Please indicate your interest in this application for more information about scholarships.

For time-based art works, we encourage the following time limits: Dance, theatre, performance art: maximum 8 minutes for solos, 10 minutes for group works (including duo). Music: 10 minutes max. Short films: maximum 8 minutes.

For literary works, artists can read their pieces and/or have them available for audience members to read them in the gallery. For reading literary works, 8 minutes for solos, 10 minutes for group works (including duo).

For 2D/3D works, we have the opportunity to keep these works on display after the festival ends until the end of May in the Sorenson Unity Center. This is an optional opportunity.

The long term exhibit may not display artwork or other items containing:

• Explicit sexual imagery; 

• Nudity; 

• Graphic descriptions or depictions of violence; 

• Anything that promotes a particular political party or candidate; 

• Anything that promotes unlawful or illegal goods, services, or activities; 

• Anything that creates a hostile work environment for employees; or 

• Anything that would violate applicable City, Utah, or federal laws, including obscenity, defamation of character, or invasion of privacy. 

You may still submit and will be equally considered for display during the festival dates May 16, 17, and 18th if your work contains anything listed above. 

*Please note that the Sorenson Unity Center and Queer Spectra Arts Festival does not insure the artwork displayed. The artists bears the risk of loss from damage, destruction, or theft of the artwork while displayed in the Sorenson Community Campus. In no event shall the City assume financial responsibility for any lost, damaged, or stolen works displayed at the Sorenson Community Campus. Twenty four hour video surveillance of the building is provided. 

2D Works should be framed in order to be displayed using a rod hanging system. If you have concerns about this, please reach out at queerspectra@gmail.com 

THANK YOU

Queer Spectra Arts Festival is made possible by generous support from the following sponsors: