THE 16TH A.I.R. BIENNIAL

CALL FOR ARTISTS

IT WAS LIKE GETTING LOST IN A FILM LOOP
A LOCK GROOVE, AN OLD LATE NIGHT, BLACK AND
WHITE
FILM NOIR LIKE NIGHTMARE ALLEY, THE NAKED CITY,
GUN CRAZY, DOUBLE INDEMNITY – THE FUGITIVE
KIND

–excerpt from the poem “FIND THE BODY” by Lydia Lunch

The 2025 A.I.R. Biennial, Find the Body, invites artists to engage with the nebulous boundary between performance and daily life, a line increasingly destabilized by the confusion inherent in our hallucinatory media landscape. Contemporary life can be disorienting. We often find ourselves caught between the tension of digital entanglements and analogue experience. We kiss our partners good night, or slide into a stranger’s Instagram DMs. We share TikToks and memes to the group chat while sitting across from each other at happy hour, then shed tears on the subway after grappling with unexpected news.  

New media have given artists the means to articulate a self, as when Lynn Hershman Leeson positions herself in front of the steady gaze of a video camera to tell her life story in The Electronic Diaries. However, media can also destabilize our assumptions about authentic self-presentation, as in the proliferation of AI-generated “deep fake” portraits. In the poem from which the exhibition draws its name, Lydia Lunch likens daily life to being lost in a “film loop.” Yet, paradoxically, artifice becomes an anchor, as stylized film noirs allow her to make sense of the situation which she finds herself. Find the Body is an opportunity to reflect on the contradictory confluence of reality and artifice in our contemporary experience—and how we present our most vulnerable selves on and offline.

Patricia Margarita Hernández  is a curator and researcher with a background in care work. Her practice, which is often grounded in collaboration, focuses on the intersections of ecology, climate change, and feminist decolonial theory. Currently, she is the Associate Curator at Amant, Brooklyn, NY. She has held positions as Assistant Curator at Dia Art Foundation, New York, NY and Associate Director at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, the first artist-run collective in the United States dedicated to feminist practices. Collaborative projects include Alliance of the Southern Triangle (A.S.T.), a platform for artists and architects focused on speculative urbanism and climate change. She has organized exhibitions, public programs, and projects at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Dia Art Foundation, Beacon, New York; the Pérez Art Museum Miami; P!, New York, NY; and the Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE; among others; and online as part of Strelka Magazine and Institute, Moscow, RUS; SFMOMA's Open Space, San Francisco, CA; Art Papers, Atlanta, GA; and The Miami Rail. Hernández holds a master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

• Works must be pre-existing and ready for exhibition. Proposals for new works are not accepted.

• Images must be JPG files only.

• Each image may not exceed 1MB and 1000 pixels in any direction.

• Images MUST be oriented properly (ex: top of the image is up).

• Videos must be .MOV or MP4 format only and must not exceed 3 minutes in length.

• Videos and credits must not contain the artist name.

• Text submissions must be in PDF format.

• Sound submissions must be in MP3 format.

THIS IS AN ANONYMOUS REVIEW. Absolutely none of the submitted materials may include the artist’s name; the artist's name may not appear in the file name or body of images, or any other submitted files. If a submitted file contains or is titled with the artist's name, the submission will be disqualified.

PLEASE NOTE

• You must fill in all fields and submit three works for consideration in order for your application to be complete.

• Incomplete applications will not be reviewed.

• Applications will be reviewed in OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024. Due to the large volume of submissions, the gallery is unable to respond to individual inquiries regarding application status.