CALL EN City on Turbulent Waters

Tel Aviv-Yafo City Museum after Shoshana and Zevulun Tomer Open Call for Proposals for the Annual Exhibition 2026

A City on Troubled Waters

Tel Aviv-Yafo as a Liminal Space

The Tel Aviv-Yafo City Museum serves as a collaborative space and knowledge hub for the city's intangible heritage. Beyond the permanent exhibition and story collection floor, the museum presents a major rotating exhibition each year. The next exhibition will open in October 2026, and to mark the occasion, the museum invites artists to submit proposals for a group exhibition on the theme A City on Troubled Waters, curated by Nir Harmat. The exhibition seeks to rethink spatial stability as a mechanism for survival and renewal in a world marked by change and instability.

The selected works will be displayed in a group exhibition accompanied by artist talks, gallery discussions, workshops, and tours. Selected artists will receive fees in accordance with Artists' Association rates. Approximately two preparatory meetings will be held to discuss the exhibition theme and familiarize participants with the museum's activities and display spaces. Works that respond to the museum's context and offer dialogues, connections, or alternative narratives to the museum's collection and character are particularly welcome.

Exhibition Theme:

Born on the sands, Tel Aviv-Yafo continues to exist within a constant paradox: everything that appears stable is already undergoing quiet disintegration, while every cycle of renewal reshapes another layer of memory. From this tension, the exhibition opens as a journey through spaces of temporality – breathing environments where fracture and repair coexist like tides.

The exhibition will examine the city as a threshold space, a city that seems to float on turbulent waters: between stability and uncertainty, prosperity and existential tremor, the need to anchor life and the sensation of ground that continues to shift.

The exhibition will move through four main axes:

Cracked Foundation – preservation and destruction, new construction on ruins of dismantled structures, collages of old and new as mechanisms of memory and forgetting.

Inside and Outside – the home and the street as a thin border between protection and threat, intimacy and exposure.

Up and Down – images of aspiration and towers contrasted with infrastructure, trembling earth, and the living street.

Ebb and Flow – moments of cultural flourishing versus crises, vibrancy versus anxiety, shifting realities.

We invite artists to propose works that challenge the concepts of home, weight, and ground, and offer alternative imaginings for a city always in motion. The exhibition will engage with erosion, floating, repair, unstable materiality, and realities that disrupt perceptions of time and the body.

Participation and Submission Requirements:

Open media: sculpture, painting, installation, video, sound, performance and new media, ceramics, glass, jewelry, textile design, illustration, movement, and performance.

Timeline:

  • Deadline for proposal submission: midnight, February 14, 2026
  • Exhibition opening: October 2026

Eligibility and Requirements:

Only complete proposals will be considered. Submissions must meet the following criteria:

  • Artists who completed academic studies more than three years ago and/or have exhibited at least one solo exhibition and/or participated in at least three group exhibitions in a gallery or professionally recognized space
  • Works created from January 1, 2021, onwards
  • Individual artists, pairs, or groups (three or more artists) may apply
  • Only active artists whose permanent residence or main activity is in Tel Aviv-Jaffa
  • Only previously unexhibited works
  • Preference for existing works ready for display and works with high physical durability suitable for extended installation under varying display conditions
  • Up to two works may be proposed: objects, series, installations, performances, site-specific or site-responsive works
  • The curator may select the entire submission or only portions according to exhibition considerations
  • Works created as part of academic studies are not eligible
  • Production of works is the exhibitor's responsibility

Submission Materials:

Please fill in the registration form, which contains several clauses:

·         Personal details

·         Information on the works, a max of 5 images, accompanying text and any other relevant material (250 words max)

·         Short CV (600 words max)

·         Link to sound and video works, if required. Files should not be over 10 MB

For questions and clarifications: info.taycm@mail.tel-aviv.gov.il