After a year’s pause for the COVID 19 pandemic, preparation for CAN Triennial 2022 has resumed. The curatorial team has announced a title for the exhibition, as well as the opening of an artist application portal, through the website, CANtriennial.org. The application portal opens June 1, 2021. Artists apply free of charge.

The curatorial team—The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Currently Under Curation program, led by Sabine Kretzschmar and Darius Steward; Thea Spittle; Hector Castellanos Lara; and Kristin Rogers—gathered at Deep Roots Experience Gallery May 21, on occasion of the launch of the Summer issue of CAN Journal. They announced the title of the exhibits in unison, led by Thea Spittle: You Are Here!

CAN Triennial manager Christa Ebert (music audiences know her as Uno Lady) gathered the curators’ collective thoughts: “On a map, You Are Here marks a beginning, notes a reality, and affirms presence. In an increasingly global world, ‘here’ is geographic, temporal, spiritual, and emotional. You Are Here is not a final destination but the start of a journey. It is your own ideas around being present– being “here.” Becoming aware of your presence and surroundings. You are what’s important here. Your connection to your surroundings is what you can truly communicate to others.”

Thea Spittle described the overall exhibit, and added her own thoughts about the title: “Our curatorial team will assemble more than a dozen exhibitions around this theme that will, at times, examine place and location, and at other times skewer notions of culture and politics, and will also map to discussions around presence and loss. Together, these exhibitions will give us an experiential journey through the literal geography of our city, and the ever-complicated situational understandings of place, context, identity, and–ultimately action.

“For me, You are here is a reminder to stay in this current moment; to bring all the feelings, sensations, dreams, remorse you are experiencing right now to the artwork on view.  . . . This city-wide exhibition is about/by/of/from Cleveland,” Spittle said.

Kristin Rogers noted that the application process (opening June 1, with deadline September 30) is about expressing interest in being part of the exhibition and showing examples of your work. Artists should think of it as a curated exhibition, not a juried show.  When the curators look though the applications and the examples of art submitted, he said, “We are not looking for art: we are looking for artists.”  He stressed that the curators will also proactively reach out to recruit artists, as well.

The curators will choose for the exhibition art that has not been publicly shown before.

Darius Steward said that his role with Sabine Kretzschmar and the students of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Currently Under Curation program will be to facilitate the students as they choose artists and work for the exhibition. Currently Under Curation is the museum’s curatorial mastery program for students of the region. It teaches them the curatorial process and gives them high level experience curating exhibitions, including Rerun, the current exhibition by international, Ohio-born, Los Angeles-based artist Laura Owens, now in its final week at Transformer Station.

Steward’s colleague in leading that program, Sabine Kretzschmar added that CAN Triennial 2022 will roll out additional programming in the coming months.

CAN Triennial 2022: You Are Here builds on the first iteration of CAN Triennial, which took place in 2018 at 78^th Street Studios. You Are Here will be presented in more than a dozen venues, clustered in neighborhoods all over Cleveland. A list of venues and additional details will be announced as the information becomes available.

Artists: Apply free to be a part of CAN Triennial 2022: You Are Here at CANtriennial.org, June 1 – September 30, 2021. 

CAN Triennial is supported by the Cleveland Foundation, the George Gund Foundation, the Chuck and Char Fowler Foundation, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Ohio Arts Council, and the People of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. To add your support, contact CAN Development Director Stephanie Kluk.