Shelter
Not necessarily a roof.
The Concept
Shelter is the first thing we build and the last thing we let go of.
It is a wall, but it is also a person. A room, but also a routine. A door that locks, but also a silence we keep because it protects something.
We build shelter out of houses, and out of habits.
We find it in people who make us feel unbreakable, and in the ones we call home even when they are nowhere near a house.
We shelter each other, sometimes without noticing — a hand on a shoulder, a text sent at the right moment, a room kept exactly as someone left it.
We also shelter ourselves from things: from grief, from truth, from the version of ourselves we’d rather not meet.
This exhibition asks artists to locate their own shelter — and to ask, honestly, what it protects them from, and what it might be keeping out.
The pull toward safety. The architecture of comfort. The walls we build without realising we’re building them.
“What is your shelter, and what does it cost you?”
This is the only question. Every work is an answer.
The Invitation
We invite artists working in any medium to submit work that responds — directly, obliquely, or unexpectedly — to the question above.
The work does not need to explain shelter. It does not need to illustrate it. It needs only to hold something true about what protects you, and to do so with intention and care.
We are not looking for a particular aesthetic or form. We are looking for specificity — for artists who have identified something real, and found a way to bring it into the room.
What We’re Looking For
Strong submissions will demonstrate a clear and personal relationship between the artist’s intent and the work itself. You might approach the theme through:
— A person — someone who makes you feel safe, or who you shelter in turn
— A place — a home, a room, a landscape that holds you
— A body — skin, bone, and breath as the first shelter we’re given
— A boundary — the walls we build to keep something out, or someone in
— A ritual — a habit that functions as protection
— A memory — a place that no longer exists but still shelters you
— Isolation — the shelter that becomes a cage
— Community — the collective structures that hold us when the individual can’t
— Or something else entirely — something that shelters you that has no easy name
These are starting points, not requirements. The most interesting answers often come from somewhere we did not anticipate.
For more information, visit Mon Curates Art
