Exhibition Details
Regional artists working in any medium are invited to submit their qualifications in consideration of the 2027 Mary B. Howard Invitational Exhibition.
Exhibition dates: June 12-September 11, 2027
This year, Guest Organizer Tariq Allana will work with four selected artists to develop a group exhibition, for which each artist creates and presents new work.
This open call invites artists to respond to the idea of ‘assimilation’ as a complex and layered condition— that includes regional, social, political, historical, and material interventions. It is a concept that suggest not only as inclusion, but also serves as a site of tension, negotiation, and resistance.
Artists are encouraged to approach assimilation not as a singular or inherently positive process, but as one that is uneven, contested, and multifaceted. Works may examine how assimilation strengthens social structures by fostering cohesion and participation, while also acknowledging how the refusal or failure to assimilate can preserve cultural specificity, autonomy, and alternative modes of belonging—particularly within diasporic communities.
Equally important is assimilation as a material. Artists may explore how mediums converge, overlap, or resist one another: mixed media practices that fuse disparate techniques, materials, or visual languages; works where mediums exist in friction or contradiction or that exist in isolation, in the absence of any assimilation; or practices that foreground hybridity, layering, and transformation. Responses may be conceptual, historical, personal, or purely material, rooted in process as much as in content.
Exhibition Prompt:
What aspect of the idea of assimilation, defined as you see appropriate, do you bring to your practice and why is it important that is remains an integral part of the works you produce?
About the Guest Organizer:
Tariq Allana, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Art Heritage, New Delhi, a gallery that was founded in 1977. In addition to being an integral part of the gallery’s annual programming, and public engagement around modern and contemporary art in South Asia, he has spearheaded a number of initiatives at the gallery including Art Heritage’s audio series. Tariq served as one of the co-founders of Delhi Art Week (2021–23), an initiative that expanded platforms for artists, galleries, and cultural institutions across India’s capital, and has consulted on similar initiatives in other India cities. He runs The Attentive Gallerist, an independent online knowledge base that places onto a single platform resources related to the business aspects of running an art gallery. Tariq has served on the Kala Sakshi Memorial Trust jury for several years, participated or moderated panel discussions around South Asian art ecosystem and authored articles related to printmaking in India.