CIFRA Opens International Open Call for Artists: POWER ON/OFF

Six artists will receive €1,000 awards, with five selected by an international jury and one through a public vote on CIFRA. Submissions are open until 1 November 2026.
CIFRA, a curatorial media art platform, has launched an international Open Call for POWER ON/OFF, inviting artists working with moving image and screen-native formats to explore how power operates today — and how our position within it can change.
Power increasingly moves through algorithms and platforms, institutions and social norms, images and media, as well as the less visible systems behind everyday life. Artists often recognise these shifts before they have a name. Their responses can take the form of refusal, humour, distortion and sabotage, but also repair and solidarity.
POWER ON/OFF approaches power not as a simple opposition between having it and escaping it. Between control and agency lies a spectrum of positions: power can be resisted, redirected, shared or reclaimed. The Open Call asks artists to consider what becomes possible when that position shifts.
CIFRA is looking for works that engage with changing forms of power, reveal its hidden mechanisms or rethink the role of images in both oppression and empowerment. The call also focuses on artists developing new visual languages through resistance, refusal, sabotage, repair or solidarity.

Six Awards of €1,000
Six artists will each receive €1,000. Five will be selected by an international jury, while one will receive the Audience Award, determined through a public vote on CIFRA. All winning works will be presented on the platform and across CIFRA’s editorial and social channels.

The international jury includes:
Leyla Fakhr — curator and Artistic Director at Verse, where she leads SOLOS, a programme working with artists who use technology in their practice or examine its impact on contemporary culture. Fakhr previously spent more than eight years at Tate, working across Tate Britain and Tate Modern.
Gonzalo Herrero Delicado — independent curator, educator and architect working across architecture, digital culture and ecology. His recent exhibitions include Reworld at Istanbul Digital Art Festival (2026), After the Technological Sublime at Art Dubai (2025), and Virtual Beauty at Somerset House (2025) and HEK (2024).
Kay Watson — researcher, producer and curator working with art and advanced technologies, photography and video games. She is Head of Arts Technologies at Serpentine in London.
Günseli Yalcinkaya — artist, curator, writer and researcher working at the intersection of online culture and contemporary technologies. She is an artist-in-residence at Somerset House and Associate Lecturer at London College of Fashion.

How to Apply
Artists must create and complete a profile on CIFRA, including a profile image, short biography and relevant links. The submitted work must then be uploaded publicly to CIFRA with a description and cover image.
Only screen-native works hosted on CIFRA are eligible. External links, including Google Drive and Vimeo, will not be considered.
Submission deadline: 1 November 2026, 23:59 GST
Audience Award voting: 13 November, 14:00 GST – 3 December, 23:59 GST
Winners announced: 5 December 2026, 14:00 GST
Submit your work: https://opencall.cifra.com/