Artist Open Calls

Unveiled - Hair and Body Adornments

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Annual Exhibition — October 2026

On View October 2nd - 25th

Opening reception - October 2nd 6pm

Artist Submission Deadline Extended - September 9th

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Unveiled is an annual exhibition celebrating fiber art and body adornment, exploring the intersection of textile traditions, wearable forms, and contemporary material practices. This year's exhibition centers on the cultural, political, and personal meanings of hair, adornment, and the body through fiber, metal, and mixed-media works.

Reframing hair and wearables as concept, structure, and metaphor, Unveiled positions fiber, metal, found objects, and other mixed materials as powerful material languages. Thread becomes strand. Weaving becomes lineage. Knotting becomes memory. Jewelry becomes identity. Garments become storytelling. Through inventive making processes, artists are invited to examine hair and body adornment as sites of identity, ancestry, ritual, resistance, protection, and personal transformation.

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Whether expressed through sculptural textiles, wearable works, jewelry, ceremonial objects, or immersive installations, artists are encouraged to investigate how the body becomes both canvas and archive—communicating personal narratives, cultural traditions, spiritual beliefs, and social commentary.

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Themes include:

• Identity and Self-Expression — Hair, adornment, and wearable forms as visible declarations of individuality, culture, gender, and belonging.

• Lineage and Ancestral Memory — Fiber, braiding, jewelry, and handcrafted adornments as metaphors for generational connection, inherited traditions, and cultural heritage.

• Political Resistance — Textile practices, body ornamentation, and traditional craft as parallel histories of marginalized labor, cultural preservation, and acts of resilience.

• Adornment and Ritual — Hair as crown; jewelry, garments, and wearable sculpture as armor, protection, ceremony, and sacred expression.

• Memory and Material Witness — Textiles, metals, hair, and found materials as keepers of time, memory, and lived experience.

• The Politics of Texture — Intersections of race, gender, beauty standards, and social norms expressed through tactile materiality and wearable forms.

• Transformation of the Body — Wearable art and body adornment that alter, extend, conceal, celebrate, or reimagine the body through sculptural and conceptual approaches.

• Connection and Belief — Adornments created to communicate personal values, spirituality, community, status, protection, or emotional connection through symbolic materials and form.

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Artists working in weaving, braiding, embroidery, quilting, felting, basketry, beadwork, metalsmithing, jewelry, soft sculpture, textile installation, wearable art, body adornment, and mixed-media practices are especially encouraged to apply. Works may incorporate fiber, metal, paper, wood, ceramics, glass, found objects, natural materials, hair, and other mixed media.

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Wall-based, suspended, freestanding, sculptural, immersive, and **wearable works—including jewelry, body adornments, garments, masks, crowns, headdresses, and other forms designed for or inspired by the body—**will be considered.

 

Submission Information

Both exhibitions are open to emerging and established artists. Submissions open now.
https://www.artwrkd.com/submissions

For press inquiries or additional information:
Ashara Shapiro
ArtWRKD
artcurator@artwrkd.com
ArtWRKD.com