KAJE is pleased to announce its 2025
| Arachnophobia |
Open Call for Exhibition Design Proposals

In summer of 2025, KAJE will host a thematic group exhibition loosely organized around Arachnophobia. The exhibition will feature work by 8 artists whose practices span across media and discipline. This Open Call solicits proposals for an intervening design or system of display for the collected works’ exhibition.

What might such a design or system constitute ?

-  A Modular architecture;
-  A Hanging device, set of devices, network or Web;
-  A Set of gatherings, happenings, or facilitated exchanges;
-  A Ritualized instruction;
-  A Text;
-  A Lighting program;
-  An Audio sequence;
-  A Mini exhibition, embedded within the greater exhibition;
-  A Virtual livestream or online portal;
-  A Transitional object, or trompe l’oeil;

Etc...

Utilizing arachnophobia as a frame to understand how artists engage in the construction of phobic objects, bodies, volumes, and mediators, the exhibition will present artworks ranging from sculpture to painting to reference-object to replica, in order to examine the unstable object relations which emerge out of “phobia”—particularly where the art object is concerned.

As a disorder, phobia is defined by the irrational, persistent, and excessive fear of an object or situation. Artists, for their part, often excel at creating irrational, persistent, and excessive objects and situations—but where does fear or anxiety enter the equation? When you look at and actively see something, what is actually taking place? Inspired in part by early experiments in exhibition-making and systems of display, opening the arachnophobic group exhibition to influence beyond KAJE controls builds upon a history of exhibition-making leaving its given frame of representation, toward a collectively constructed limit-case; something else, difficult to define and in need of participatory testing grounds.

Along with the proposal for a presentation schema through which collected works might be either framed or experienced, the open call application asks for samples of past work and other creative references that illustrate an applicant’s experimental instinct. Familiarity with the KAJE program and mission, or similar contexts of curation are encouraged. The selected applicant must be willing to collaborate with KAJE staff in preparation for the show; financial, technical, and creative support towards realizing the selected submission will be provided. Deadline to apply 11:59pm on March 20th, 2025. Further details below:

Timeline:
Submission Deadline: March 13th, 2025.  
Final Selection/Notification: Late-April, 2025
Exhibition Install: June 14—25th
Exhibition Opening: June 26th, 2025

Baseline Budget Allocation:
Artist Fee : $500
Production : $1,200
Additional technical and material resources available

Ground Level Floor Plan