Unearthing the Interconnections between Nature and Women

ART from HEART, a women-led, award-winning organisation working at the intersection of art and activism, invites UK-based artists working in any medium to submit work for ROOTS, the upcoming exhibition at the 3rd edition of the ECOFeminism Festival.

The festival welcomes artists of all genders, backgrounds and beliefs, and encourages submissions that explore ecological themes, feminist perspectives, or the connections between the two.

We are interested in work that goes to the root of things.  

Roots hold a plant in place and carry what it needs, yet most of their work is unseen. The same is true of the labour, knowledge and relationships that sustain communities: care work, ancestral and Indigenous knowledge, the memory carried in bodies and in land.

Roots also name something harder: displacement, severance, inheritance that cannot be put down, and belonging that is claimed or denied. They trace the paths of diaspora, of those who carry a place with them and those who are separated from it, and the colonial histories that drew those paths: the extraction of land, labour and bodies, and the suppression of the knowledge that went with them.

Roots are also made of story. Myth, cosmology and oral tradition are among the oldest ways communities have accounted for where they come from and how to live in relation to the earth, and we welcome work that retells, contests or reclaims them.

We do not ask for work that illustrates the theme. We are looking for work that questions it: what it means to be rooted, who is permitted to be, what is lost when roots are cut, and what grows from them.

Why ECOFeminism and Why Now

The ECOFeminism Festival begins from a conviction: that the exploitation of nature and the subordination of women are connected, historically and structurally, and that this connection is worth bringing to light at a time of ecological and political crisis. We do not treat the connection as simple or settled. It has been used to confine women as much as to free them, and we welcome work that questions it, complicates it, or refuses it. What we hold firmly is the aim: a world in which neither women nor nature are mistreated.

​Submissions may engage with one or more of the following, or with a perspective of your own.

• ​Land & Ecology. Relationships to place, soil, water and species; extraction, repair and stewardship.
• ​Lineage, Memory and Myth. Inheritance, ancestry, matrilineal knowledge, origin stories, and what is transmitted or withheld.
• ​Diaspora, Displacement & Belonging. Migration, exile, and rootedness as both refuge and constraint.
• Colonial Histories and Decolonial Practice. The legacies of colonialism in land, labour and knowledge, and practices that resist or repair them.
• Work made in earlier decades in response to the ecofeminist movement that emerged in the 1970s is also welcome.

Selection Criteria​

• Submissions are assessed on conceptual rigour, clarity of response to the theme ROOTS and to ecofeminist thinking, formal and technical command, and the coherence of the work presented. Work drawing on myth or tradition should engage critically with its source and its context. Submissions will be reviewed and selected by the ART from HEART co-founders and curators Judit Prieto and Beatriz Perez.
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​Your Submission​​​​​​

• Up to 3 works in any medium: 2D, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, 3D, sculpture, ceramics, installation, video and new media. This call is open to artists based in the UK. Each submission includes a statement of 150 to 250 words on how the work relates to ROOTS. 
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Fees

• ​Submission fee: £10 per artwork, up to a maximum of 3 (1 artwork £10 | 2 artworks £20 | 3 artworks £30). Select the option that matches the number of artworks you are submitting. Fees cover curatorial review and administration and are non-refundable.
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• Selected artists pay an additional £50, which covers gallery hire and marketing, exhibition curatorial planning and installation, promotional materials, and features on our website, social media and newsletter.
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Sales

• A Gallery Pop-up Shop to sell prints and originals. You set your price and receive it in full; we add a 20% commission to the price the buyer pays.
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Key Dates

• Deadline: 1 February 2027, UK time 
• Exhibition Installation: 5-6 April 2027, the Art Pavilion, Mile End, London.​​
• Exhibition runs from 7-11 April 2027
• Exhibition Opening: Thursday 8 April 2027, 6-9 pm
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A Living Legacy

• Your entry fee contributes to reforestation in the Amazon Rainforest through One Tree Planted. Together, we have planted 435 trees so far and counting! 

Please read the FAQs  before applying