What would it mean to create a home for the parts of ourselves that the world has called irrational, unstable, dangerous, or “mad”? 

 

We are seeking art that imagines sanctuary as a kind of psychological and emotional home: a series of spaces or “rooms” that allow us to move through different aspects of Black lived experience. We're looking for work that has sat with how joy, frustration, doubt, grief, and anger actually show up and are practiced, and what it takes to hold them at once.

 

What we're not looking for: joy as decoration, or madness as diagnosis or label. We want work made from inside the process, not reported back from the far side of a healed one the messy middle, grounded in lived experience or honest inquiry.

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What we're looking for

• Work grounded in lived experience, or in genuine inquiry into these emotions

• Any medium — painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, installation, sound

• 8–15 artists selected; 1–3 pieces per artist

 

You'll share a portfolio, so have that link or your image files ready. Submissions close September 20th, 2026. Questions? Contact: Tacumba@thefutureisblack.info