Call for Submissions: Tapestry of Traditions

Deadline: June 20, 2025
Exhibition Dates: July 7 – July 19, 2025
Gallery 35, 35 Queen Street West, Brampton, ON L6Y 1L9

Eligibility: The festival welcomes submissions of original artworks from professional, emerging, and amateur South Asian artists across Ontario. Eligible artworks may include painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, textiles, and mixed media.

Submission Fee: Free

Traditions live in all of us — passed down through generations, carried across borders, and made new through personal experiences. They appear in how individuals see the world and in the ways they express it. This year VASA Arts Festival invites artists to contribute to Tapestry of Traditions, a celebration of the influences, memories, and cultures that shape us all. The festival seeks artworks that explore how tradition moves through the artist—whether through ancient techniques, cultural stories, or contemporary interpretations of timeless ideas. Each art piece may honour the past, challenge it, or reimagine it, as long as it remains authentic to the artist’s journey. Participants are invited to weave their stories into the fabric of the VASA Arts Festival 2025.

The festival welcomes submissions of original artworks from professional, emerging, and amateur South Asian artists across Ontario. Eligible artworks may include painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, textiles, and mixed media.

Select participating artists may also be invited to facilitate online workshops focused on their art form or artistic practice. Artists leading these workshops will receive an honorarium.

Important Dates

Deadline for Entry: June 20, 2025 (11:59 pm Eastern Time)
Notification of Selection: on or before June 23, 2025
Artwork Drop off: July 5, 2025, 10am – 12pm
Artwork Pick up: July 19, 2025, 3 – 5pm
Exhibition Dates: July 7 – July 19, 2025

Submission Guidelines for Selection

• Artists can submit up to 2 images of original artworks. Artworks must be original, aligns with the theme, have been created in the last 2 years and not appeared in prior VASA art exhibitions. Artworks should not exceed size 36×36 inches, due to space constraint only limited number of large artworks will be selected.

• Name your submission images with your first and last name, followed by title of work e.g JohnDoeMoonDance.jpeg. Image files should have minimum resolution of 72 dpi.

• Results will be emailed by June 23, 2025, with further information. The curator will appraise artworks in accordance with the exhibition theme while looking for creativity that successfully represents the objective of the theme along with technical skill, form and concept. Only accepted artworks will be included in the exhibition. Curator’s decisions are final.

Final Submission

• If you are accepted, by submitting your entry you give VASA Arts Festival the right to publish your images for publicity purposes for the current year and within all future promotions.

• Artwork must be ready for display and arrive with professional framing and mounting with appropriate hardware securely attached. VASA Arts Festival will not be held responsible for damage caused by faulty hanging hardware.

• VASA Arts Festival reserves the right to refuse artworks that arrive with sawtooth, clip hangers or faulty wiring. Art in unsuitable condition for display, copies, reproductions or controversial subject matters will not be accepted.

• Only accepted artwork by the curator will be included in the exhibition. All selected entries will remain on display until the final day of the exhibition.

Learn More Here