School of Art Student Exhibition Call for Entries 2025

Pratt’s School of Art Dean Jorge Oliver is pleased to invite all School of Art students to submit their work for consideration to be included in a group exhibition curated by Pratt alums Olli Toppeta (History of Art and Design ’22) and Dylan Kaleikaumaka Hill (History of Art and Design ’23). The exhibition, presented in collaboration with the Department of Exhibitions, the Department of History of Art and Design, and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, will take place in August and September 2025 in the Schafler Gallery in the Chemistry Building.

This exhibition will spotlight LGBTQIA+ and queer themes. Submissions are open to all Pratt School of Art students—undergraduates (including Foundation and Associate Degree students), graduate students, and the graduating class of 2025. We welcome work that engages with and reflects the diverse experiences and perspectives within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, non-binary, pansexual, two-spirit, intersex (LGBTQIA+), or any other identity within the broad spectrum of the queer community.

The exhibition is an excellent opportunity for students to showcase their work, build a relationship with professional curators in conceiving a group exhibition, and engage with the greater Pratt community.

The School of Art includes students in Art and Design Education, Creative Arts Therapy, Creative Enterprise Leadership, Digital Arts, Film/Video, Fine Arts, Photography, AOS Graphic Design, Illustration, Game Design and Interactive Media, and AAS Graphic Design/Illustration. The exhibition aims to elevate the community of queer students in the School of Art and celebrate their accomplishments, diverse identities, perspectives, values, ideas, experiences, and beliefs. This exhibition will also provide an opportunity for contextual discussions on self-determination, intersectionality, and other emergent themes regarding identity.

Submissions will be accepted until midnight EST on Sunday, March 23, 2025. There is no fee for entry. Not all submissions will be accepted for the exhibition. Selected works will be on exhibition from the beginning of August through the end of September in Pratt’s Schafler Gallery on the Brooklyn campus. The guest curators will select them. All media are welcome, including drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, performance, writing, sculpture, ceramics, installation, film, video, graphic design, illustration, animation, digital media, interactive media, games, mixed media, or whatever else a student might dream up. Students will engage with our guest curators in what we hope will be a positive professional development experience. The curators will assume that the work you submit will be available to exhibit at Pratt from August to September and that you can drop it off at Pratt in early May. All works should be delivered and picked up from Pratt at the student’s expense.

Meet this year’s Co-Curators and Faculty Advisor:

Dylan Kaleikaumaka Hill (she/her) is currently the Meyerhoff-Becker Curatorial Fellow with the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Contemporary Art Department. Her role is primarily dedicated to assisting the curation of the Meyerhoff-Becker Commission in the museum’s East Lobby and additional commissioned projects, including Abigail Lucien: Under Other Skies. As her curatorial practice develops, she aspires to center underrepresented perspectives, interrogate colonial narratives and broaden pathways for museums to better serve the shifting needs of visitors. She received her MA in the History of Art and Design at the Pratt Institute in 2023. Her profession as a Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant informed her research, which explored how Native Hawaiian culture, U.S. imperialism, and tourism manifest in art and design.

Olli Toppeta (they/them) is a librarian, curator, and community organizer in Seattle, WA, where they work as an academic librarian and professor, having graduated from Pratt in 2022 with an MS in Library Science and MA in the History of Art and Design. Topetta’s work is dedicated to sharing stories, creations, and visions that oppose colonial, cisheteropatriarchical, and white supremacist ideologies. To that end, their librarianship centers student-focused collection development, prioritizing accessible content of radical, liberation-minded perspectives. Art historically, their research interests lie at the intersections of queerness, visual culture, political awakenings, and collective meaning-making. In their personal political praxis, they engage heavily with the criminal legal system, through projects providing reference services to incarcerated individuals and assisting in creating spaces for the trans community within the Washington state prison system. In all aspects of their work, they hope to contribute threads to the larger tapestry of queer (art) histories and futures.

Cassils is an Associate Professor in the Fine Arts Department at Pratt. For a recent solo exhibition, SITE Santa Fe described their work this way: “Cassils’s work positions their body as both the raw material and protagonist of their performances. For the Canadian-born, New York- and Los Angeles-based artist, performance is a form of social sculpture, reflecting how bodies are shaped by external forces and social expectations. Cassils’s art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle, survival, and empowerment. Employing a myriad of visual tactics—outlines and silhouettes, solar exposures, retinal burns, flashes, and Rorschach devices—the artist aims to complicate the conditions of trans visibility in a moment of heightened violence.” Cassils has also performed or exhibited at the Banff Center in Canada, the Victoria Albert Museum in England, and Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York, among other venues. They are the recipient of a Guggenheim, fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and United States Artists, and a Creative Capital award.