Call for Artwork:
reharvest repair
Re-harvesting challenges the traditional notion of waste as something useless or undesirable. It prompts us to see waste not as an end but as a beginning.
Opening reception: October 17, 2026 (International Repair Day)
Exhibition duration: October 17 – December 01, 2026
reharvest repair invites artists, designers, makers, repairers, hackers, scavengers, and re-makers to submit work for a curated exhibition exploring acts of re-harvesting and repair as creative, social, and ecological practices.
We live amid cycles of extraction, overproduction, and obsolescence. Yet within the cast-offs of industry, the remnants of consumption, and the objects marked by wear, rupture, or neglect, there remains an abundance of material and imaginative potential. reharvest repair asks how discarded objects, scraps, off-cuts, leftovers, and residual materials might be transformed into new works, tools, propositions, and objects that provoke new ways of thinking about waste, repair, and value.
reharvest repair resists the notion of repair as mere restoration to an original state. Instead, it advances repair as an act of reconfiguration and transformation, cultivating renewed relationships among people, materials, place, and value. Repair is understood here not only as fixing, but as remaking, re-pairing, revaluing, and reimagining.
Call opening: July 30, 2026
Submission deadline: August 30, 2026
Location: Boghossian Gallery, Providence Public Library, Providence, RI
Curators: Ayako Maruyama, Markus Berger
Assistant Curator: TBD
Graphic Design: Clara Eloise Cayosa
Eligible work: Physical objects, artworks, tools, material experiments, repaired objects, sculptural works, design objects, and speculative artifacts.
Digital-only work is not eligible as a stand-alone submission. Short videos documenting processes, repairs, or material transformations may be considered for inclusion in a shared projection.
Selection: The selection of artworks will be curated by Ayako, Markus and one guest curator. Selection will be based on the criteria of the call, and size restrictions.
Key Dates:
Submission deadline: August 31, 2026
Notification: September 15, 2026
Delivery of art work: October. 9 (10 - 11 am) & 4-5 pm) ;
October. 10 (10 am. - 4 pm)
Installation: October 13, 14, 15 2026
Exhibition opening: October 17, 2026, 1 pm - 3 pm
Exhibition closing: December 01, 2026
Artwork pickup: December 02, 2026 11 am. - 1 pm & 5 pm. - 6 pm.
The exhibition seeks work that engages the afterlife of materials, especially those connected to the regions industrial, domestic, ecological, or community-based material streams. We are interested in projects that do not simply reuse waste, but rethink the values and conditions that made something “waste” in the first place.
Submitted work should be able to speak to one or more of the following themes:
● re-harvesting discarded, residual, or overlooked materials
● repair as care, resistance, transformation, or imagination
● the creative reuse of scraps, off-cuts, broken objects, or industrial leftovers
● circular material practices and alternatives to extraction
● visible mending, reconfiguration, assemblage, grafting, patching, or adaptation
● community-based making, repair cultures, and local material knowledge
● the transformation of waste into material, aesthetic, social, or ecological value
● work shop proposals (that can be held in the gallery or in the PPL makerspace)
Submissions may include finished works, material experiments, repaired objects, tools, prototypes, speculative artifacts, or process-based work.
Presented at the Providence Public Library, the exhibition will function as a local archive of material afterlives: a public collection of objects and practices that reveal how re-harvesting and repair can generate alternative futures from the fragments of the present.
We welcome submissions from trained and self-taught artists, designers, repairers, craftspeople, students, educators, community makers, and others working with discarded or residual materials.
The exhibition may be accompanied by public programming, including lectures, open-mic conversation sessions, hands-on workshops related to re-harvesting, repair, circular material practices, and community-based making.
Submission:
Please submit via Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfcyElrenKlFxmHU8L6RAmNmqBsUz2RFN97XePpBLCOIuSJIA/viewform?usp=header
Questions:
For more information or to submit your proposal, contact Ayako and Markus at:
reharvest-repair@risd.edu
[1]@amaruy01@risd.edu
_Assigned to amaruy01@risd.edu_
Reharvest Repair
community gathering
+ Call for artwork/
repair projects
We are excited to announce two big updates in our reharvest repair project and invite you to join us for a conversation and gathering.
Our big updates:
- We would like to share our reharvest-repair mapping tool with you and invite collaboration
- We are curating an exhibition in the Fall 2026 and will launch a Call for Artworks for anyone who would like to be involved
Come by on Wednesday, Nov. 19th at The Repair Atelier and learn more!
We invite local makers, re-makers, artists, designers, hackers, fixers, scavengers, repairers and everyone who transforms scraps, off-cuts and materials deemed “waste”, into art works, tools and objects (of provocation). Engaging the afterlife of objects, those marked by wear, rupture or neglect, and connecting to larger themes of social, cultural and environmental notions of transformation.
At our gathering you can
- Mapping Tool: Learn about and participate in Creative community mapping
- Repair project rapid “open mic”: Share your project and learn about what others are up to_ You can also share ideas and/or images to show: Send us images at reharvest-repair@risd.edu or bring your objects of creative transformation
- Build a community of resource transformation: Bring along other artists, hackers, repairers you know
- Share ideas and work: Send us images (HERE!) or bring objects of creative transformation
- Learn about the upcoming exhibition in Fall ‘26 and how to be involved
Please spread the word and we hope to see you there!
about the project
By re-harvesting waste, or more precisely, by reclaiming residual materials, we can significantly reduce or even eliminate the need for freshly extracted resources in architecture and design. When we shift our architectural and design thinking towards alternative methods rather than relying on conventional construction materials, we open up opportunities to utilize different material waste streams. These residual materials, often deemed unnecessary, can be repurposed either in their original function or given a completely new use.
re-
harvesting
to build networks with the RI Industries and document the material discard flows that can be utilized
re-
pair
the reimagination and transformation of these resources with and along community partners, institutional partners, students, and communities at large through community engagement
20 Washington Place
Providence 02906
USA