Art Calls ARC Gallery: Deepest Rhythms
Opportunity Description
International Deadline: August 30, 2026 – This call is for photography that engages with liminality and seasonal transition; images exploring rest, descent, ancestry, grief/vigil, or the body’s relationship to seasonal rhythm. Landscape, portraiture, and still life photographs are all welcome as long as the work speaks to this in-between, threshold energy.
This work gathers at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, where the year tips into its dark half. It is a threshold season, and the body knows it before the mind does. The pull toward slowness and the disappearing of the light. The instruction to fold inward as the ground begins its own long rest.
To pause here is not idleness. It is a refusal. The world we inhabit demands constant motion and vigilance, and to stop is to say no to that. In this season, the choice to slow becomes an act of care. It is also defiance.
As the warmth thins and light withdraws, the self turns to interior work. This is the kind of knowledge only the dark makes possible. The western hemisphere, and the body alongside it, prepares for rest, the implied question is what should be carried forward and what should be laid down? The withdrawal of light is not where the membrane between worlds grows thin. The shadows draw near, and we make room for them. We honor the ones who created our bodies with their own erotic power. We honor the dead and respect their navigation of the same rhythm of humanity we are now pursuing. We keep vigil to remember the accumulated knowing our own bodies fight to retain.
Photography mimics this register of motion and rest, of the porous body and the thinning veil. It respects the cyclical. The natural rhythm of withdrawal and return. It harkens, as Lorde wrote, to the body’s deepest rhythms. To slow, to descend, to honor the dead, to let the body rest. They are one act to tend the fire of our fearless selves.
Exhibition dates: October 2-25, 2026.
ELIGIBILITY
Original works created within the last 5 years. All mediums and materials will be considered in addition to video and performance based arts. No projections or media installations will be accepted for this show due to space limitations. Open to all artists, national and international.
CURATOR
Corinne Pompéy is a fine art photographer based in Chicago, IL. She holds a Bachelor of Art in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, where she co-founded and co-curated the For Women, by Women Art Gallery. Her work explores themes of identity, feminist issues, and body image, with a particular focus on the intersectionality of womanhood and the Black experience. She also examines the Black experience through the relationships she’s cultivated in her life, using them as a method of self-reflection, as seen in her recent series A Soft Place to Land (2025). Through her photography and self-portraiture, Pompéy captures moments of transition and explores the relationship with herself and her own body, using visual storytelling to engage with broader social, cultural, and personal narratives. Pompéy’s work has been exhibited at spaces including EXPO Chicago (11th Edition), The Museum of Science and Industry, Bridgeport Art Center, and Woman Made Gallery.
She is currently developing a new self-portraiture series exploring disappearance and visibility as a Black woman.
ENTRY FEE
ARC will only review the number of images you pay for. (standard fee is $40 for 3 images. $10 for each additional image. Students pay $25 for 3 images, with $10 for each additional)
Notification of Acceptance: Will go out by email by Tuesday, September 15, 2026
SALES
Works will be for sale unless noted as NFS (not for sale) on the entry form. ARC takes a 20% commission fee on works sold. So please price your work accordingly
About:
ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation is a non-profit, woman-run cooperative gallery dedicated to providing alternative space exhibition opportunities for innovative artists outside the commercial gallery system. Since 1973 ARC has given exposure and support to artists, providing an atmosphere for the continued development of artistic potential and experimentation.
ARC is run entirely by its women artist members; as a non-profit exhibition space. ARC receives some support from outside funding sources but not enough to cover our operating expenses. Thus, to provide the space and services we offer to exhibiting artists, we defray our expenses by charging exhibition fees. Each of the rental spaces in the gallery actually costs twice as much as we charge the artists.
ARC Gallery & Educational Foundation
1463 W. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60642
(312) 877-5760
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