Queer Art Festival Baku 2021 is now open for entries

CALL FOR ENTRIES: The second edition of Queer Art Festival Baku, organised by Nafas LGBTI Azerbaijan Alliance is now open, inviting local visual artists to take part in sharing their most thrilling urban stories.

Nafas LGBTI Azerbaijan Alliance is delighted to announce that its second Queer Art Festival Baku 2021 competition is officially starting its second phase! This year’s entrance topic is “Queer Urban Stories”.

It is a very-well known fact that Baku is not the safest city for LGBTI+s and women to live in and the bad city planning is failing us every other day. Urban planning and infrastructure is not inclusive enough neither for the community nor for the women. Streets of Baku have witnessed lots of hate crimes, abuse, harrasment and violence against queer community and “man-made” city planning has a big part in that. Taking Baku in hand and thinking about urban problems there is a lot more than that - women and marginalized communities are rarely thought about when it comes to very basic elements of cities like public toilets, transportation, street lighting to give a few examples. To hear more about how gender and urbanism is linked and which challenges we face as the queer community in cities you can listen to our podcast called “LGBTI+s, Women and the City”.

We invite artists to take up a feminist lens and tell their stories through their vision and tools to address urban inclusivity problems of Baku by covering at least one of the directions below:

● Baku for ALL - how?

How do we want to see Baku (in terms of queer and women inclusivity)?

● Baku for ALL - why?

Why inclusive city planning is important for women and LGBTI+s?

● Patriarchy EVERYWHERE - time to smash it!

Exploring patriarchal traits in city planning and the ways of neutralizing it.

● Queer Spaces: safe Baku for everyone

Importance of safe urban spaces for the community in big cities

● Feminist Baku

Exploring the connection between our habitat and Gender.

Queers Shape Cities

● Exploring the ways of shaping more inclusive, LGBT+ friendly and safe cities for everyone.

The competition takes place in one round. The deadline is November 12, 2021. Artists will send their entries to [email protected] and after collecting all the work we will publish them on the festival's Instagram account (@queerartfest). After publishing, the pieces will be open for public voting for 2 weeks on @queerartfest. After finalizing the votes and evaluating all the entries, the first 3 finalists will be announced on 5th of December and the winners will receive a symbolic amount of cash prize.

Requirements:

- Artists of visual nature are called for exhibiting paintings, drawings, prints, graphics, photographs (can be either digital or film), short video installations, illustrations, crafts, and, or digital pieces in relation to the aforementioned subject of interest.

- Each artist can submit 1-3 entries (single page pieces or short graphic stories). Each piece must display one independent graphic story on a single page and must have a short description (max 150 words).

- Entries submitted need to be in a size and form that can be shared on social media.

- Entries can be in black and white or color and must be strictly connected to the topic of the exhibition.

- Entries can be either old pieces from artists’ portfolio or can be produced after the call

* We encourage young and amateur visual artists to be part of the festival as well – because interpretations and the messages of the pieces will be considered as a stronger criterion than professionality while we assess the works to choose the winners

** We highly recommend artists to take into the account that the exhibition is local exhibition and pieces where local elements and related social problems are worked will be more appreciated

Criteria:

The competition will be judged by jury members (winners of last year’s festival) who will seek to identify artists of topic related and original products and stories.

Scores assessed by judges will be only 70% of the assessment (35% - story, connection to the topic; 35% - visual content, authenticity) another 30% will come from votes that artists will get from social media.

Finalists will be invited to share a video with us where they represent and tell stories of their work and we will announce them through our Instagram page!

No Entry Fee

Deadline: To be part of the festival send your name, surname (or pseudonym - however you feel comfortable to be addressed), entries and descriptions to [email protected] by November 12, 2021.