Open Call : 凤凰 Fenghuang - CAO Collective x Vox Populi for An Endless Meeting
Open Call : 凤凰 Fenghuang - CAO Collective x Vox Populi for An Endless Meeting
DUE AUGUST 17th
Vox Populi's curatorial residents for An Endless Meeting, Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草, are now accepting submissions for their fall exhibition, 凤凰 (Fenghuang).
If you are a Philadelphia-based artist with a current or past connection to collective work in the city, we encourage you to apply.
Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草 was selected as the curatorial resident for An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together, a multi-part project on view at Vox Populi from October 2–November 15, 2026. CAO Collective is co-directed by hú-tu (huiyin zhou & Laura 嘟嘟), an artist duo whose collaborative practice draws from social practice and anthropology.
In the curators' words:
"We propose to curate through Fenghuang—a composite, relational figure from Chinese cosmology often mistranslated as 'phoenix'—as a framework for working with grief, dream, and transformation. Unlike the solitary bird of heroic burning, Fenghuang is feng and huang held together: a body constantly reimagined through fragments, care, and continual encounter. Associated with the south and with Fire, Fenghuang carries a quiet resonance with the Global South, diasporic movement, and queer ways of living relationally—a homecoming and an unlearning at once. To curate through this figure is to gather collectives into a cosmology that is not linear but circular, less shaped by rupture than by tending: where legacy and hope are not only preserved but permitted to bloom, degenerate, and return—where rebirth unfolds not through spectacle, but through the slow, burning grace of coming together again and again."
Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草 creates art that fosters relational community healing, making space for nuanced narratives rooted in China, the Sinophone diaspora, and other experiences from the margins. Their interdisciplinary practice interweaves collective poetry, performance, food art, clay, photography, sound, video, children's games, meditation, herbal medicine, and installation to explore systems of discipline, censorship, capitalist extraction, memory, ritual, intimacy, and queer/feminist kinship. CAO has received support from organizations including The Luminary, BRIC, Culture Push, Creative West, Asian American Arts Alliance, Queens Art Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Raleigh Arts, and New Breath Foundation. Their work has been featured by Hyperallergic, The Amp, Indy Week, and Sine Theta Magazine.
An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together is a multi-pronged project taking place this fall at Vox Populi that activates collective process as subject, form, and method. Spanning exhibitions, a curatorial residency, public programs, and a print publication, the project explores the politics of collectivity, inviting broad publics to reflect on their own experiences of collaboration. An Endless Meeting will be presented as part of Collective Futures, a citywide initiative bringing together artist-run and community-based organizations to examine collective cultural production.
An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
About The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.
