Let Our Hearts Speak : Open Call

Seeking submissions exploring Eastern Europe as memory, migration, identity, belonging, and emotional landscape for our upcoming publication. Open to artists worldwide.

When we love we can let our hearts speak - bell hooks

Inspired by hooks’ reflections on love, voice, and radical relationality, Let Our Hearts Speak is an open call by Rethinking Eastern Europe for a forthcoming collective publication.

We invite artists to submit work that engages with the idea of "Eastern Europe" as a lived, shifting, and often contested space, not only as geography, but as memory, inheritance, migration, and emotional landscape. We are interested in projects that explore how histories are carried and transformed across bodies, borders, and time. The publication will bring together visual and written works that reflect on intimacy, love, identity, displacement, and belonging.

"Rethinking Eastern Europe" is understood as plural and expansive, shaped by diasporas, post-socialist realities, and the personal archives of those who move through or away from it.

Eligibility

This open call is open to:

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  Artists of any age

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  Artists of any nationality

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  Artists based anywhere in the world

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  Artists at any stage of their practice (emerging, established, or outside institutional definitions)

We welcome submissions in any form of artistic practice
This includes, but is not limited to:

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  Photography/ expanded image-making

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  Text and writing

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  Moving image (including still extracts or sequences)

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  Collage and assemblage

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  Archival material

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  Experimental or process-based work

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  Visualised sound and sonic work

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  Scores, songs, and musical works

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  Hybrid or interdisciplinary formats
  

We especially encourage experimental work that resists traditional categories and expands what a publication can hold. This is a publication-based project. Submitted work need to be able to be reproduced in print and digital formats.

This may include:

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  Full images or selected details

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  Video stills or extracted frames from moving image works

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  Text excerpts or edited sequences

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  Reformatting, cropping, or layout adaptations to suit publication design
  

We will work carefully with all selected works. Artists will be credited appropriately throughout the publication.

What we are interested in
We are especially interested in work that:

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  Engages with "Eastern Europe", its diasporas, or post-socialist contexts

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  Explores migration, memory, identity, and belonging

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  Questions fixed narratives of nation, origin, or cultural purity

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  Draws on personal, documentary, or archival approaches

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  Considers intimacy, care, and emotional life as political space
  

Selected works

Selected artists will be featured in the collective publication as part of Rethinking Eastern Europe’s ongoing research-led artistic programme.

Please fill out this form to apply for our open call.  Please stick to the word count and follow the image upload sizes otherwise we will not consider your submission. 

Judges

Diane Smyth

Editor of the British Journal of Photography and the Photoworks Annual, lecturer at the London College of Communications.

Max Gorbatskyi 

Curator at Open Eye Gallery, and co-curator of the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. Co-founder of Ukrainian Photographies

Zula Rabikowska 

Artist, curator, writer, lecturer and founder of Rethinking Eastern Europe.

Selection & Awards

A number of artists will be selected for inclusion in the Let Our Hearts Speak publication. Selected works will be curated as part of the editorial process and featured across the printed and/or digital publication.

Alongside the publication selections, three highlighted awards will be given:

1st Prize

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  £150 honorarium

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  Featured placement in the publication

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  Portfolio review with Zula Rabikowska, founder of Rethinking Eastern Europe

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  Featured spotlight across Rethinking Eastern Europe platforms
  

2nd Prize

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  Featured placement in the publication

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  Portfolio review with an artist from Rethinking Eastern Europe

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  Social media feature
  

3rd Prize

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  Featured placement in the publication

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  Social media feature
  

Additional selected artists

Other selected contributors will be included in the publication as part of the final curated selection. Some artists may also be invited to additional opportunities, including:

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  Rethinking Eastern Europe Instagram takeovers

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  Editorial spotlight features

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  Future collaboration opportunities

How to apply

Please apply by filling out the form below.

For print-quality reproduction, all image submissions should be a minimum of 300 DPI and at least: 1748 x 2480 pixels (A5 size, portrait, at print resolution), or 3508 x 2480 pixels for a landscape A4 image across a double-page A5 spread. Please submit the highest-resolution version available, as low-resolution images may not reproduce clearly in print.

Please send images as JPGs.

Text-based submissions can be up to 200 words in length.

If you have any questions, or if there is a more accessible way we can support you in applying, please get in touch on hello@rethinkingeasterneurope.com. We are happy to discuss alternative application formats and access needs.

Application form with further information > https://forms.gle/kv9LGC3XP7D4BbFg9

Deadline for submissions: 31st August 2026.

Application Fee: £8 per submission

We want to make the process as accessible as possible, so if you would like to apply but it's not something you can afford please email hello@rethinkingeasterneurope.com for a discount code.

Please send a PayPal payment of £8 to z.rabikowska@gmail.com to apply.