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The Speed of Fashion: Call for Art on Fashion & Climate
Type: Exhibition Opportunities [View all]
Posted by: The Crow's Nest
Deadline: Fri, May 9th, 2025
Call for Work: The Speed of Fashion
Summary:
Opening June 7th, our second group show of the year will be entitled The Speed of Fashion. Fast fashion dominates our landscape & landfills. Slow Fashion is often stereotyped as boring, shapeless, and prohibitively expensive. This exhibit seeks to explore the problems with what we wear now, and asks how we should wear our clothes in a not only sustainable, but restorative future. The Speed of Fashion is a national call looking for artwork exploring fashion and fibers in an environmental and climate justice context, with an emphasis on solutions-centered work.
Background:
Fast Fashion is new, commercially manufactured apparel released and distributed with frequency that is impossible to produce ethically, usually out of petroleum-derivative (plastic) fibers. Fast fashion does not mean machine made: All clothing is made with human hands– labor issues are made invisible to consumers by global supply chains that obscure exploitation and modern slavery. Fast Fashion brands often perpetuate greenwashing by putting out empty gestures towards sustainable programs, such as a single clothing line with all-natural materials or recycling bins made available in stores that are not followed through on.
Slow Fashion is apparel developed at an ethical pace with sustainable materials, whether that be deadstock, upcycled, or natural fibers. Slow fashion can also be a way of thinking about fashion, promoting anti-consumerist habits that change our relationships to how we dress, and how we think about the material objects in our lives. Slow fashion edicts include creative reuse, visible mending, circular economies, mutual aid, and degrowth.
THE CALL:
We are looking for work that investigates the environmental and ethical issues around the current state of fashion– from textile production to labor issues to consumer waste in the fashion industry. Critically, we are looking for work that imagines and explores solutions to the world of fashion, whether speculative or already in action. We are especially interested in work that celebrates existing underappreciated solutions, such as DIY attitudes in alternative subcultures, and slow fashion that may be inherent to a cultural dress.
Fibers work will be the heart of this show, but any artwork exploring fashion or fibers in a climate justice context as a theme is welcome. This is a national call to artists residing in the United States.
Work may take the form of the following:
Original slow fashion garments (displayed on mannequin or hanger)
Artists must send their work ready to be displayed.
Mannequins are only recommended for artists able to deliver their work in person, must be provided by the artist.
Slow fashion garments should be oriented towards a couture or costumey space, emphasizing creativity in a gallery setting, not necessarily ready-to-wear.
Slow Fashion illustration/garment design
Any media (2D, 3D, time based, installation) that investigates fashion through an environmental justice and climate lens, whether solution or problem oriented.
2D & 3D work that employs slow fashion edicts in its process or production (including but not limited to upcycling textiles, sustainable fiber arts, visible mending)
Fibers works that connects the materials to climate justice.
We are also seeking programming proposals for DMV Area Artists. Selected Artists who are able to facilitate programming will receive an honorarium & budget of up to $250, depending on the proposal. We are looking for artists who will be able to facilitate the following:
Visible mending workshops
Upcycling/Creative Reuse workshops
Zine making
30 minute artists talks
Performances (poetry reading and performance art preferred)
Additionally, as this show will be primarily open throughout the month of June, any programming proposal that is able to incorporate LGBTQ+ Pride as a programming theme will be prioritized.
Please apply and learn more about programming proposals at this separate free link.
Practical Notes:
We are not interested in Generative AI-Assisted work and have serious concerns about the environmental impact of this technology at this time among other ethical concerns.
We are also unlikely to be able to accommodate Bio-Art due to safety concerns.
Feel free to email alexi@crowsnestbaltimore.com if you are unsure whether or not your work may be rejected for safety concerns before submitting.
All artwork must be fully completed at time of submission. We cannot accept incomplete works or proposals.
For installation work, please use interior photography provided to map out where your work would fit in our gallery. Installation artists should be prepared to install their own work during our install window May 26-June 6, 2025, to be scheduled with the Crow’s Nest if selected.
Installation work is only recommended for artists able to install work in person. Otherwise, please submit a tech rider with very clear install instructions and where you would hope the work would be situated in the gallery as part of your submission.
Our window will be available for this show! Work able to be installed in the window is of particular interest to us. Please note if you are interested in your work being installed in the window in your application.
Note: This show will take place during the height of summer, and this window will receive high sun exposure. Material that is not lightfast may be damaged. Highly flammable material is not recommended for the window.
All work should be able to fit through a standard residential doorframe, or be able to break down into components that fit through a doorframe.
If work is to be listed for sale on the Crow’s Nest website, we will take a 20% gallery fee. Work is not required to be listed for sale.
We are not primarily a commercial gallery, but works have been sold during the duration of our shows before.
Video work cannot be listed for sale.
For artwork that needs to be shipped, the artist is responsible for the cost of sending their work to the Crow’s Nest, and providing secure reusable packaging (tape is acceptable as a disposable necessity). As part of our sustainability goals, we will reuse the same packaging to return artworks to artists.
All artists mailing work should provide a pre-paid return shipping label inside of their packaging.
Artists/curators should provide their own insurance for their artworks. The Crow’s Nest does not claim liability for the artwork. All artists should be over the age of 18.
2D Work should be sent ready to hang. All work should be sent with all material necessary for safe & secure display.
A $12 application fee supports the administrative costs of this exhibit & providing honorariums.
This fee is discounted for current Undergraduate students to $6, proof of enrollment is required (any combination of student ID number, email, and expected graduation date is acceptable). Application fees may be sent via venmo to @crowsnestbaltimore. One application may include up to 3 pieces of artwork and 15 attached images.
This fee may be entirely waived on a need based basis, please email alexi@crowsnestbaltimore.com to obtain a fee waiver. Applications will not be considered complete until the application fee or fee waiver have been confirmed.
Entry fees will not be refunded for any reason.
Timeline:
Call Opens April 8
Call Closes May 9
Selected artists contacted: May 14
Installation window: May 26-June 6
Opening: June 7
Programming TBD on Saturdays 1-5 PM while show is open
Closing: July 5
Deinstallation Window: July 7-14
Posted on Wed, April 16th, 2025
Expires on Fri, May 9th, 2025
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