Call for Artists!
The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre seeks applications for an artist working in immersive, new-media, or installation-based practice, to complete a work through a residency at the JCCC during March to May 2026.
The work produced will engage broadly with the theme of language as a cultural practice, with an emphasis on polyphonic transgressive, and renewing possibilities of language. Recognizing that all language users make use of multiple, contextual repertoires in a hyper-diverse, globalized, and mediatized world, we seek work that resists notions of language as bounded, fixed, or standard systems associated with a single nation state, and moves from duality to multiplicity. The work may consider questions and perspectives, such as but not limited to:
- What does it mean for a language, a dialect, a way of speaking to survive?
- How can language disrupt ideas of citizenship and state in a globalized world?
- How does the self mold itself by using language with others?
- How can we think of language competency outside of deficiency and loss models?
- Polyphony and heteroglossia (Mikhail Bakhtin); translanguaging (Ofelia Garcia); language as rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari); exophony (Yoko Tawada)
The produced work will be in conversation with a more traditional panel-based museum exhibit on Japanese Languages in Canada, which understands Japanese and its iterations in Canada as a unique case study of how language shapes and is shaped by social and cultural forces, particularly in the context of trauma and forced displacement.
We welcome work that engages specifically with Japanese languages in some way but this is not a strict requirement.
Work will be displayed at the JCCC for at least 12 months. We are flexible as to which part of the JCCC, it occupies and are open to creative uses of space.
Remuneration
The selected artist will be provided with a $1500 honorarium for the development of the work, as well as a $2500 fee for exhibition of the work for approximately 12 months.
Approved expenses for materials and equipment will be the responsibility of the JCCC.
Mentorship
The selected artist will be provided with research and technical mentorship as required.
Application information and contact
Please send the following to vidhyae@jccc.on.ca by February 15, 2026:
- Summary of concept (max 750 words) of the work you proposed to create during the residency
- CV
- (Optional) Porfolio of past works (max 2 pages)
- (Optional) Short statement (max 200 words) indicating what areas you would like mentorship in
Please email vidhyae@jccc.on.ca if you have any questions about the application process or residency.
Timeline
February 15, 2026: Submissions due
March 2026: Selection process
May, June, July 2026: Project development and mentorship
August 2026: Exhibit installation
September 2026: Exhibit opening
September 2026 – September 2027: Exhibit on view