OPEN CALL FOR UKRAINIAN FEMALE ARTISTS

PRACTICES OF PRESENCE

A curatorial project by Maria Proshkovska on the New Ecology of Coexistence, within the international cultural project ASSEMBLE

Find the open call in Ukrainian language  here

Within this curatorial project, Maria Proshkovska invites Ukrainian women artists who left Ukraine after the beginning of the full-scale invasion and have since returned, to rethink this shared experience and work together on a joint project. “Practices of Presence” unfolds in three parts: I. Conflict. II. Displacement. III. Environment.

“I proceed from the conviction that artistic practice can be not only a way of representing war or crisis, but also an instrument for producing new knowledge and new models of coexistence. Art becomes a space in which we not only record the consequences of destruction, but also learn to rebuild relationships between people, nature, memory and place.” — Maria Proshkovska

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We are looking for Ukrainian women artists who:

• have experienced forced displacement, i.e. left Ukraine after the beginning of the full-scale invasion;

• have returned and continue to live and work in Ukraine despite the war;

• are ready to create new works specifically for this project.

For Maria, this particular experience is essential; for her, returning does not mean returning to a previous life: “We come back changed, to a place that has already become different. It is precisely this encounter, to my mind, that is the beginning of a new artistic enquiry.”

We are open to different media and career stages. Formal education is not required.

WHAT PARTICIPANTS RECEIVE

• Curatorial support throughout the entire process.

• A participation fee and a production budget for the works.

• Participation in the exhibition and the public programme.

• The opportunity to take part in international iterations of the project in 2027.

• An environment for exchange with artists, researchers and interdisciplinary communities.

HOW TO APPLY

Please send the following documents in PDF format to assemble.ukraine@gmail.com :

1. Artist bio: a short description of your artistic practice, a portfolio (up to 10 works) and contact details.

2. Experience: a brief description of your experience of displacement and return, in free form, of any length.

3. Idea: a document outlining the idea or line of enquiry you would like to develop within the project (up to 1 page).

Application deadline: 15 September 2026

Please note: You may apply in Ukrainian or in English. If you have any questions, contact in advance assemble.ukraine@gmail.com for individual feedback.

What does Maria explore in “Practices of Presence”?

I. Conflict. How it all began

Maria’s curatorial practice grows out of a single question: what happens to our relationship with a place when the environment itself has radically changed?

War has changed the environments we live in. It has destroyed not only cities, buildings and infrastructure - forests, rivers, soils, ecosystems, sound landscapes, cultural practices, social ties and the very sense of home have all been transformed.

For the curator, “environment” is a single interconnected system in which the natural, social, cultural, political and psychological do not exist separately from one another. This is why she sees the crisis not simply as an ecological problem, but as part of a broader, war-driven transformation of environments.

Maria is interested not in destruction itself, but in what emerges after it.

The central question she poses in this project is: how do we learn to live with changed environments?

II. Displacement. How we will work

The project is built on exchange: of observations, materials, maps, photographs, field notes, ecological data, personal records, sound landscapes and other forms of artistic research. Your personal experience of returning to changed places is the point from which we begin.

Depending on security conditions, the project may include practices of presence: collective or individual fieldwork in changed environments. This is not a documentation of destruction. The purpose of these practices is to be present in a place, to listen to it attentively, to observe it, and through artistic practice to build new relationships between the human being and the environment.

Maria is not looking for ready-made works. Her task as a curator is to create the conditions in which new artistic knowledge can emerge.

III. Environment. Components of the project

An open online platform. It will bring together the works and the processes behind them, field notes, maps, photographs, sound landscapes, texts, conversations with artists and ecological observations. Artists will be able to contribute to it.

An exhibition. A presentation not only of the work, but of the process of its emergence: how new ways of understanding changed environments are born out of fieldwork, observations, materials and dialogues. Instead of finished narratives, the exhibition presents artistic research as a prolonged process of negotiation with a changed environment.

A public programme. Discussions, artist talks and workshops with artists, researchers, ecologists, anthropologists and local communities.

ASSEMBLE is an international cultural project exploring the climate emergency at the intersection of involuntary migration, displacement, conflict and ecological decline.

Funded by the European Union, ASSEMBLE is realised through a partnership between @d6_eu_ (CY), @congress.of.cultural.activists (UA), @movartists (ES) and the international mobility network @otm.network, with associated partners @larnaka2030 (CY), @d6culture (UK) and @atriskartists (FR).