Open Call for Art: Take Care (of Us)

Deadline to submit: April 30, 2026

Artists working in all visual media are invited to apply to this year’s Open Call, guest juried by Natasha Zeta, CFEVA Visual Artist Fellowship Alum. Please find the submission form below. Accepted Submissions will be notified in early May for a July drop off date to Philadelphia, PA 19104. The exhibition will be on view from July-September 2026. CFEVA Artist Members may apply to this opportunity at no additional cost. Please visit cfeva.org/membership for more details, to join or renew your membership. Please contact Membership@cfeva.org with any questions.

As artists, we imagine what could be different, sometimes what could be better. This exhibition invites engagement with that impulse while confronting the tensions that arise when our imaginings meet flawed reality. Take Care (of Us) explores how we shape (and are shaped by) ecosystems, environments, and one another, even as we remain vulnerable to forces beyond our control.

Take Care (of Us) is not about prescribing solutions, but about holding space for complexity, interconnection, contradiction, and hope. “Take care” has many meanings: a caution toward one’s unintended impact, but also a preemptive taking of responsibility; to tend to, shelter and protect, or a goodbye that bids, “look after yourself.” Each reflects our tacit attachments to a world larger than ourselves.

CFEVA Members, please apply below.

Natasha Zeta (b. 1993, Mumbai, India) is a mixed media painter who creates interactive portraiture with broken mirrors, allowing the viewer to step into another perspective, challenge their conceptions and empathize with her subjects. Zeta seeks to amplify narratives from marginalized communities that disproportionately experience mental illness, but whose stories are vastly underrepresented in our conversations about mental health. To further this mission, Zeta collaborates with nonprofits to paint their constituents, foster community engagement, cultivate cultural reform, and raise public awareness.

In 2022, Zeta received the Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellowship. She also received grants from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority’s Fund for Art and Civic Engagement (with support from the Knight Foundation), Puffin Foundation, and was a finalist for the Barbara Deming Foundation Money for Women Grant.

In 2021-22, Zeta worked with Safe Horizon’s Anti Trafficking Program, the nation’s leading victims assistance organization providing case management, psychotherapy, and legal assistance to trafficking survivors. 

In 2023-24, Zeta is working with Women Against Abuse, Philadelphia’s largest domestic abuse service provider, to create space and visibility for domestic abuse survivors and their scars, sites of somatic healing, artwork, and journeys.