SoMad Earth Exhibition Call

34 E 23rd St 4th floor
New York City, NY 10010

Feb 06, 2026

SoMad invites your submissions for the fourth annual Mad World, an event and exhibition of experimental film, visual art, and performance exploring ecological crises through an intersectional environmentalist lens, opening on April 18, 2026.

This year’s theme understands environmental collapse not as a distant abstract condition, but as something shaped by systems of power: colonialism, borders, racial capitalism, and extractive industry. They are interested to see your work that considers how land, bodies, and movement are governed, and how other ways of knowing and caring could reconfigure relationships to the earth and to one another.

Our theme has been informed by intersectional environmentalism, a framework established by Leah Thomas, and rooted in the intellectual and political work of Black feminist scholars and organizers, including the Combahee River Collective and Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. This lineage understands social justice and environmental justice as inseparable struggles, and insists that ecological harm must be read through overlapping systems of race, gender, class and colonial power.

They are drawn to practices that foreground Indigenous, diasporic, queer, and culturally inherited knowledge systems, not as symbolic references, but as living tools for survival, relation, and networks of care.

They are seeking work that engages with ecologies shaped by borders, migration, and displacement, and that approaches environmental crises as something lived and embodied. They are especially interested in practices that center Indigenous and cultural knowledge as ecological ways of knowing, and that expand ideas of care, labor, and maintenance as environmental practices.

They invite artists to trace the connections between flooding, toxicity, and climate collapse and the social conditions of fellow humans, and to help reframe relationships with the earth by refusing extractive or colonial ways of seeing nature. They are drawn to work that imagines kinship across human and non-human worlds, and that dreams new ecological realities into being through community and collective care.

Apply for one or more of the submission categories: experimental video, visual art, and performance. If you would like to be considered for multiple categories, please submit an additional application.

They invite finished, original experimental short-form films under 15 minutes. Selected works will be presented on a 10 x 16ft projection screen on Mad World’s opening day, as well as presented on a 75” flat screen TV in the exhibition.

Visual Art

Please apply with original, finished works that are ready to hang or display, or that can be presented in a digital format. Selected artists will work with SoMad to determine the optimal presentation of their work and will have access to SoMad’s in-house projectors, pedestals, and monitors as needed.

Works in the exhibition will be offered for sale with proceeds split 60% artist / 40% SoMad. SoMad facilitates sales and coordination of sold works. Artists are responsible for delivering or shipping their work to and from the gallery and coordinating logistics in advance.

Performance

Live performances will take place April 18, 2026 on a dedicated stage with audio and visual support provided by SoMad. Selected performers will. Available equipment includes RBG full-spectrum LED lighting, a projection backdrop, projector, speakers, microphones, and basic furniture as needed.

Artists are welcome to propose new works or existing performances. Selected performers will work with SoMad on the presentation and finalize technical needs in advance of the event.

• This exhibition will function as a temporary ecosystem of overlapping practices, voices, and ways of knowing.
• This application is free to submit.
• Selected film makers and visual artists will receive a one-time $150 participation fee and one complimentary ticket for yourself and one for a guest to the event.
• Selected performers will receive a one-time $300 participation fee and one complimentary ticket for yourself and one for a guest to the event.

Key Dates and Scheduling:

• Applications Due:
  March 1 at 11:59pm
• Selected Artists Notified:
  March 20, 2026
• Artwork Delivery and Installation:
  April 6-11, M-F 11AM-6PM
• Exhibition
  
  Hours:
  
  Monday to Friday, Gallery Hours - 12PM to 6PM