Who Can Submit?
ALL QUEER & TRANS ARTISTS who:
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come from histories impacted by colonization, dispossession, partition, or genocide
OR -
are impacted by housing insecurity, homelessness, land theft, displacement, encroachment, or gentrification
OR -
who are tenants/renters
OR -
who are members of tenant associations / unions, land stewards, farmers, land use / housing policy advocates, or housing / tenant / community organizers.
How Do you define art?
Art is SO BIG! It includes:​
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Music
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Illustration
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Photography
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Recipes
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Piercing
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Drag
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Video / Film
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Sewing
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Dancing
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Installations
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Sculpture
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​Gardening
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Fashion
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Architecture
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Tarot
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Farming
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Hair Styling
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Knitting
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Dreaming
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Zine- making
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MORE!!!!!!
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO SUBMIT?
SUBMISSIONS ARE FREE! And...
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NOTHING NEW! Pick something that you’ve already created / documented / made.
There is no theme. -
ONE SUBMISSION / ARTIST ONLY
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Formatted to LETTER-SIZED paper (8.5” by 11”)
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Must be DIGITAL at 300 DPI (aka no physical submissions) (e.g. documentation photos, video stills, recipe cards, musical scores, digital illustrations, photographs, graphic design, poetry, collage, scanned ephemera, knitting patterns, etc.)
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AGREE TO NON-COMMERCIAL SHARING
What do you get from participating?
ALL SUBMISSION that meet criteria will be:
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PRINTED on archival paper and INCLUDED in a PHYSICAL EXHIBITION at the THIRD ANNUAL QUEER HOUSING SUMMIT.
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INCLUDED in an VIRTUAL EXHIBITION that will launch as part of the Third Annual Queer Housing Summit.
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INCLUDED in a DIGITAL & PRINT CATALOG that will be archived so future generations can find the names of Queer & Trans artists who are fighting / fought for housing / land use / spatial justice.
ANTI-CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Our Trans and Queer Communities, near and far, are experiencing renewed and increasing attacks against our bodies, our ways of gathering, and our expressions. The intensifying assaults make our lives more precarious, which in turn makes our homes more unstable. We are seeing Trans and Queer siblings getting priced out of housing and healthcare, struggling to put food in their bellies. When our siblings do end up unhoused, they are violently targeted by aggressive law enforcement enacting regressive anti-vagrancy laws. Our Trans and Queer Existence is being legislated away, and we are the ones at the forefront of this struggle. Again.
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And…
We, Trans and Queer Peoples, are still here. We, Trans and Queer Peoples, have always been here. We, Trans and Queer Peoples, will always be here. We are nothing new, and our continued and sustained existence will forever hold firm against any and all forms of repression, tyranny, and oppression.
And…
We, Trans and Queer Peoples, must find each other and organize. It is not enough to merely exist. We demand a future where ALL our Trans and Queer Peoples are thriving, where we ALL live in dignity with ALL our essential needs freely met. To realize this future means cultivating opportunities HERE & NOW for its possible existence.
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MORE THAN MERE EXISTENCE is an exhibition and catalog that strives to unite three aspects of everyday life that are under renewed attack: safe and secure housing, Trans and Queer existence, and artistic expression. Subject to exclusion, precarity, and censorship, it is incumbent upon us to cultivate spaces of defiance.
MORE THAN MERE EXISTENCE will platform the conversations and complexities of Trans and Queer communities who are doing the embodied work towards decommodifying and decolonizing our relationship to land, without seeking to essentialize our identities to solely that work, knowing that we are “creators” in many senses.
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This open call for art is defined by accessibility — not prescribing to specific disciplines or forms. Following the lineage of the “Nothing New” Anti-Curatorial Origins (see more below), Trans and Queer artists in the fight for housing/land use/ and spatial justice will submit pieces of art that they have already created with no thematic barrier.
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It is in this vision of a future of thriving Trans and Queer Peoples that we—an autonomous collective of Trans and Queer Housing/Land Use/Spatial Justice Organizers, Activists, and Artists—are facilitating the MORE THAN MERE EXISTENCE CALL FOR ART for the Third Annual Queer Housing Summit on August 23, 2025.
NOTHING NEW
ANTI-CURATORIAL ORIGINS & ORIENTATIONS
Nothing New is an anti-curatorial process initially designed by San Francisco Bay Area artists Jason Wyman / Queerly Complex and Bushra Gill that curates the intersections between everyday artists and systemic social issues.
This is done by:
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Clearly articulating a current and relevant systemic social issue and the communities impacted by it through an Anti-Curatorial Statement,
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Reducing roadblocks and barriers to participation so that any artist of any practice, tradition, culture, skill, ability, age, or relationship to the word “artist” can contribute to Calls for Art,
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Producing physical and virtual exhibitions that connect Participating Artists to one another and larger, intersectional communities,
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Creating a landing page that includes the digital catalog, the names of all Participating Artists with hyperlinks to their websites or social media, documentation photos, the Anti-Curatorial Statement, and a final report summarizing the impact of the show,
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Archiving a Digital Catalog on the Internet Archive and keywording all Participating Artists names making them discoverable for future generations,
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Printing Physical Catalogs that are shared with Participating Artists and archived in physical archives so there is a record of everyday artists fighting for liberation that future generations can find, and
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Publishing an Impact Report that documents the demographics, outcomes, budget, and significance of the experience on Participating Artists.
We believe the fight for Indigenous, Black, racial, gender, sexual, disability, environmental, class, caste, migrant and refugee, worker, and education justice and liberation is NOTHING NEW, and we believe cultivating camaraderie amongst everyday artists is one small act of solidarity we can take now to ensure justice and liberation exists for generations to come.
Who is Organizing This?
This is a volunteer-led effort by:
Priya Prabhakar
Priya Prabhakar (she/her) is an organizer, film/media-maker, and researcher. She is based out of the Bay Area — unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land — and grew up in Chennai, India. She currently works as a Housing and Land Use Organizer and Multimedia Producer at People Power Media. There, she produces grassroots film, multimedia, and research and organizes with the Race and Equity in all Planning (REP) Coalition — more than 40 grassroots organizations throughout San Francisco building people power through policy advocacy, community expertise, and narrative change, working towards community-centered planning and the de-commodification of housing and land. She was a 2023 Fellow in the MediaJustice Network Fellowship, and is currently a 2025 Fellow in PolicyLink’s Spatial Futures Fellowship. Her process of media production (video, audio, web) is rooted in the confluence of anti-capitalist struggle with a materialist exploration of archival and contemporary art, music, film, and design, and unpacking the contradictions, patterns, and systems of everyday life.
Priya is also a member of the Oakland chapter of Critical Resistance, a grassroots organization working towards abolishing the prison industrial complex. These days, Priya is enjoying listening to qawwali, playing chess, building lamps, exploring the canon of lesbian film, and reading works of critical fabulation.
Elliot Bailey
Elliot Bailey (he/him) is a community organizer based in Fresno, California. Possessing a degree in construction management, he demonstrates a keen interest in construction, entrepreneurship, and community empowerment through development initiatives. In his capacity as Community Outreach Coordinator, he has directed policy advocacy efforts and orchestrated the Queer Housing Summit, a national convening. His ongoing commitment to housing advocacy is driven by a mission to unify individuals from diverse backgrounds, with a particular focus on marginalized and underrepresented communities.
South Tower CLT is a nonprofit that envisions a barrier free South Tower neighborhood, creatively building shared prosperity and health. They achieve our mission by power building and stewarding economic resources to build community control of land, buildings, and civic resources centered in Fresno’s South Tower neighborhood in order to improve quality of life and prevent or reverse displacement of residents.
Jason Wyman is Queerly Complex
Wyman was born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what they are coming to know as Turtle Island, who has settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco. Jason’s name means healer, or so they’ve been told since a young child. What they are coming to understand as the significance of their name is that healer does not mean healed or (even) healing. Rather, it is a positionality within the cosmos that allows one's self to change and be changed by all that unfolds. It is to be curious and listen, and then create.
Wyman, too, is white. They, too, are male (presenting). Jason, too, is queer. They, too, are anti-binary. Wyman, too, is an artist. They are so many things named and unnamed. But who Wyman be is a gatherer of relations and a dreamer of possibilities amidst the chaos of creation and death and rebirth.
Jason’s work has shown in homes, in public transit plazas, in secret gardens, in parks and along water's edge, on streets and alleys, and in institutions, whose names do not matter. Wyman is also a founding Board Member of People Power Media and an Arts, Placemaking, and Virtual Experience organizer with Queer Housing Summit.
We are aided in our efforts by:
