Emery Community Arts Center, in partnership with The New Commons Project, invites artists to submit their work for consideration in our upcoming thematic exhibition, "Reimagining the Real."

This exhibition will feature artworks that engage the legacy of realism in the 21st century, continuing, complicating, or contesting this tradition. We welcome artwork submissions of all media.

Accounts of western art history often emphasize the political significance of realism’s commitment to depicting “ordinary life” in a “naturalistic” way. Historical realism thus reflects a certain consensus around the meanings of nature, the ordinary, and the real. How do we imagine the real and its politics today? What does traditional realism still have to offer? Who determines which realities count as real? Whose perspective is reflected in the depiction of “ordinary life”? How is our perception of nature and of others limited (or expanded) by aesthetic convention? How might realities of abstract, non-visual or non-static experience enrich our understanding of realism or the real?

The exhibition will be on view from September 2nd - October 21st, 2021 in Emery Community Art Center’s Flex Space Gallery, University of Maine at Farmington.