CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Undercurrents is a digital curatorial project exploring artistic responses to fish, waterways, and aquatic ecologies. This inaugural online edition invites artists to consider rivers, oceans, wetlands, estuaries, and imagined waters as sites of memory, extraction, migration, ritual, survival, and transformation.
Water is both material and metaphor. It sustains ecosystems, carries industry, marks borders, erases evidence, and holds myth. Fish move through currents shaped by climate change, pollution, overfishing, damming, and restoration efforts, but also through story, symbolism, and cultural imagination.
We are seeking work that engages aquatic life and waterways through ecological urgency, scientific observation, political critique, mythic thinking, or meditative reflection. This is the first edition of an online project that may expand in future years.
Selected artwork will be featured on the Institute for Freshwater Fish Futures’ ongoing digital archive. The Institute for Freshwater Fish Futures hosts a collective of scientists, artists, writers, landscape architects, architects, environmentalists, journalists, and community leaders dedicated to honouring reciprocal responsibilities to freshwater fish in watersheds locally and globally. This project is funded by a SSHRC Connections Grant.
Curatorial Focus
We are particularly interested in works that consider:
Aquatic ecosystems under threat
Fish as subject, symbol, or collaborator
Water as archive or witness
Infrastructure (dams, canals, fisheries, ports)
Indigenous water knowledge and sovereignty
Climate change and shifting realities
Ritual, myth, and poetics of immersion
Artists retain copyright over their works.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage
Artists are not permitted to use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in any part of works submitted for this project. This includes the use of generative AI tools, platforms, or programs in the creation, development, or production of the artwork.
Compensation
An honorarium of $1,450 will be awarded to each of the selected 8 artists in line with CARFAC fees. The Institute for Freshwater Fish Futures Restor(y)ing fish futures, together.
Submission details
We invite artists to submit a short description of proposed work for consideration.
Your proposal along with a brief artist bio and CV/resume must be received by April 11. Selected works will be announced by mid-April. Completed work must be received by May 16.
Please submit your proposal via email to: rphurisamban@protonmail.com, with the subject line “Undercurrents submission”
May be new or existing works (1-2 pieces). Accepted formats include visual art, audio and sound works, video, writing, and music. Works involving AI usage will not be accepted.
Artist retains final copyright.
Submission package: Artist statement that includes: title of work, medium, dimensions (if applicable), indicate whether this is new or existing work, and a brief description (250 words)
Artist bio (150 words)
Brief CV or resume (1-2 pages)
**FINAL selected works will be due no later than May 16, 2026.
Proposal submission deadline: April 11, 2026
For additional information or questions, please contact Rapichan Phurisamban at rphurisamban [at] protonmail [dot] com
The Institute for Freshwater Fish Futures 