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Event details

Mizna and Soo Visual Arts Center (SooVAC) invite early career, US-based artists from the Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) region or of SWANA descent to submit artworks for a juried exhibition titled Let There Be Spaces in Your Togetherness. The exhibition will take place December 7, 2019-January 9, 2020 at SooVAC in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Submissions are due September 15 at 11:59 pm.

Let There Be Spaces in Your Togetherness is a quote by Khalil Gibran, famed Arab American poet of the early 1900s. While SWANA communities are scattered around the globe due to legacies of colonization and migration, Mizna serves as a critical platform and gathering space for Arab and Muslim creatives. Mizna has a twenty year history of featuring the work of established and emerging visual artists in our lit + art journal, Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America, as well as in exhibitions and public artworks. In this exhibition, we are looking to showcase the perspectives, practices, and artworks of a new generation of US-based SWANA creatives as we look toward another two decades of cultivating rich spaces. Spaces in which, in Gibran’s words, “the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow,” spaces in which the diversity and artistry of our community is celebrated and sustained.

Let There Be Spaces in Your Togetherness is juried by Essma Imady, Hend Al Mansour, and Lamia Abukhadra, three Arab artists based in the Twin Cities. The jurors will show works alongside the works of selected artists, anchoring the exhibition. The exhibition will travel to St. Cloud and New York Mills in greater Minnesota as part of a visual art and film tour of Mizna’s work.

We define early career artists as artists with a focused direction or goals who have not been substantially recognized within their field, in the media, with funding support, or through the public at large.

View full submission guidelines here.