Description

Failings, as a concept, implies a perceived shortcoming. Be it a moral deficit, or a material
miscalculation, or some other misalignment of desire verses outcome – failings, or one’s failure,
is typically perceived as negative. And yet, in a successful studio practice, explicitly courting
failure by defying expectations, taking risks, and pushing material or conceptual boundaries
frequently defines avant-garde achievements, professional success, and creativity in general.

This exhibition considers how failure frames YOUR artistic practice.

Artists are asked to submit work that successfully reflect notions of failure. Perhaps artists will
consider this theme through processes that have gone awry, content or subject matter that
addresses the idea specifically, or through some other evocation of deficiency or defeat.

In 2015 the curators of Failings, artist Anthony Cervino and art historian Shannon Egan, who are
also spouses, designed an exhibition and completed a corresponding book titled Ejecta. For this
project they considered how shifting expectations for success and failure defined them as
individuals and also in relation to their marital and professional partnership. As an outcome of
this initial collaboration, in 2018, Cervino and Egan opened an art gallery and curatorial
workshop, Ejecta Projects, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with the name chosen - in part - because
Ejecta connotes the word reject, the antithesis of accomplishment. In their life at home and as
educators, artists, or curators, their failures continue to give context to their successes, and
perhaps most relatable, these setbacks often push us forward as we seek meaning in loss,
dismissal, and other significant “f**k ups.”

Submission instructions: www.ejectaprojects.com