Call for proposals. Deadline: March 27, 2020
Selected artists will be notified by April 10, 2020.
Democracy of the Land 2020 - The Mayflower Compact Untethered
Fine Arts Work Center Gallery
Provincetown, MA USA
May 8-31, 2020
Curated by Jay Critchley
Director, Provincetown Community Compact
Application Closed
The Provincetown Community Compact invites artists of all genres to re-imagine and recreate a response to the first democratic document in the “New” World of 1620: The Mayflower Compact.
What does democracy mean in 2020? How does sustainability of the land and environment reflect sustainability of our democracy, and vice versa?
This year is the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Harbor where they wrote the Mayflower Compact. This historic agreement, signed by forty-one of the 102 passengers, excluding women and those designated “sinners” by the signers, laid the groundwork for the radical takeover of the indigenous land and peoples. The ship was originally bound for Virginia but ended up in Provincetown after near mutiny, which necessitated the agreement.
This request for proposals amplifies the founding of the Provincetown Community Compact in 1993. Created by artist Jay Critchley, its mission is to update and expand the 1620 document by engaging the entire community regardless of race, religion, class, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Democracy of the Land 2020 - The Mayflower Compact Untethered invites artists of all genres - visual artists, musicians, dancers, poets and writers, actors, playwrights, performance artists, sculptors, videographers and other creatives - to propose a renewed and inclusive Mayflower Compact for the present and the future and to explore decolonization. Work may include painting, sculpture, drawing, video, manifestos, performance, action, ceremony, video and community engagement.
This exhibition takes place in a world of wealth inequality, globalization, eroding democracy and environmental calamity, in the context of the historic year of 2020: the centennial of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote, the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower Compact and the 2020 elections.
What is your vision? Is our democracy sustainable? Is our planet sustainable?
Applicants are asked to fill out the application and include a proposal, up to five images and/or five minutes of video and related information.
Limited funding and honorariums will be available to selected artists.
Deadline for applications is March 27. Selected artists will be notified by April 10, 2020.
Thank you.
Jay Critchley
Jay is a longtime resident of Provincetown and the shifting dunes, landscape and the sea are his palette. He has utilized sand, Christmas trees, fish skins, plastic tampon applicators washed up on beaches, pre-demolition buildings and selected sites in his work. He is a conceptual and multi-media artist, writer and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Ireland and Columbia.
Jay has had residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain, CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France, Milepost 5, Portland, OR and Harvard University where he also lectured.
His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and he recently gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist as a Corporation. His 2015 survey show at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his environmental projects.
Jay was honored by the Massachusetts State Legislature as an artist and founder and director of the Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life, which has raised $7M for AIDS, women’s health and the community. For his Democracy of the Land project, he created the feminist rewrite of the Mayflower Compact 2020.
He is represented by AMP Gallery in Provincetown. www.jaycritchley.com
The Provincetown Community Compact
**The Provincetown Community Compact, Inc. (The Compact) was established in 1993 as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization by artist Jay Critchley. It is organized as a community-building and philanthropic organization to support living artists and the vitality of the arts community.
The mission of The Provincetown Community Compact (The Compact) is to advance the health and cultural well being of the community of Provincetown and the Lower Cape – its people, the natural environment and the economy.
The Compact administers and manages the Swim for Life, an annual fundraising event initiated in 1988, that has raised over $7 million to support local health related organizations. The Compact also supports a number of local cultural and civic organizations as a fiscal sponsor and administers and manages residencies for the community, artists, and writers at two properties in the historic Peaked Hill District in the Cape Cod National Seashore. The Compact has initiated six local non-profits and sponsors various community projects.
The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers and to restoring the year-round vitality of the historic art colony of Provincetown. The Work Center is internationally known for its acclaimed 7-month residency program granting fellowships to 20 emerging writers and artists, as well as its open enrollment Summer Workshop Program, an online writing program 24PearlStreet, and an extensive series of year-round cultural events and exhibitions.
Application Closed