COLLAGE FESTIVAL 2025
OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS
TERMS & CONDITIONS
This document is prepared by the Wood Be Nice Workshop Association (Celula de Artă) headquartered in Bucharest, acting as the "Organizer" of COLLAGE FESTIVAL 2025, hereinafter referred to as the "Organizer."
By registering for COLLAGE FESTIVAL 2025, each participant declares that they have read, agree with, and assume the obligations set out in these Terms & Conditions. Also, by completing the registration form for Collage Festival, each applicant agrees to the processing of personal data and consents to photographs of the artworks being published for the purpose of promoting the project (online, print, advertising materials, etc.).
Registration for the open call is free of charge.
The Organizer will award 3 prizes to the artists selected in the exhibition, based on votes from the visiting public and the jury, as detailed below.
Collage Festival 2025 is a project initiated by the Bucharest Collage Collective, organized by the Wood Be Nice Workshop Association, and co-funded by AFCN - National Cultural Fund Administration, registered as a "Repetitive Character Project" for the AFCN Cultural Projects session II / 2025, registration number CALL10-PR-444.
Project partners are: Green Hours Association, Social Dialogue Group, and Creionetica.
Collage Festival brings together collage artists from Romania under the umbrella of Bucharest Collage Collective and Romanian Collage Collective communities, building collaborative bridges with international artists as well. The three-day festival will take place in Bucharest, from October 24 to 26, 2025, at Green Hours (Calea Victoriei, no. 120, sector 1, Bucharest).
The festival's online platform, www.collagefestival.ro, is the main communication channel for the open call and subsequently for the festival's artistic program and Romanian collage artists community. The festival's social media pages are on Facebook and Instagram. Contact email is hello@collagefestival.ro.
Collage Festival 2025 promotes collage as an artistic and critical form, with this year’s theme being "The New 20's". The festival includes:
The New 20’s
This year’s festival theme invites artists to reflect on the parallel between the two decades, 1920 and 2020, and the multiple perspectives that define them.
The 1920s exploded with Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus, jazz, and sound film: a collage of new forms born from the ruins of war. Today, we live in the "new 20s" under the pressure of the pandemic, AI evolution, conflicts, and visual oversaturation. Old structures are cracking again — and collage remains the timely tool to dismantle and recompose them.
Why compare? Both decades emerge from crisis and launch simultaneous revolutions in technology, art, and lifestyle. While the 1920s used collage to dismantle old orders and imagine industrial worlds, the new 20s ask us to cut out fragments of a hyper-digitalized world and propose meaning in a saturated present.
Collage Festival 2025 calls for reflection and comparison between these two periods, bringing face to face:
Roaring Twenties / Jazz Age / Golden Twenties / Années Folles vs. Post-Internet / Post-AI.
Dada-Merz Avant-garde, constructivism, and surrealism vs. glitch, meme culture, NFTs, generative code.
Collage can still say "no" and "different." Cut, paste, and reconfigure the new 20s!
More historical references here.
Participation is open to national and international visual artists, experienced or debutants, experimenting with collage and related techniques: analog collage, digital collage, video collage, assemblage, sculpture, installation, mixed media (collage with painting/drawing/textile art, etc.).
To participate, applicants must complete the submission form on www.collagefestival.ro by August 25, 2025, 23:59. Applicants upload a maximum of 3 works (from which the jury will select 0 to 3 works) according to the criteria and artistic concept specified in this regulation.
Projects submitted after August 25, 2025, will not be considered unless the call deadline is officially extended.
Selected participants will be notified by email by September 1, 2025. If the call is extended, the jury deadline will also be extended.
The collage exhibition will be open to the public for one month (Oct 24 - Nov 25, 2025). Participants agree to keep works exhibited until November 25, 2025.
After submission closes, the Collage Festival jury will select the works to be exhibited at Green Hours (Oct 24 - Nov 25, 2025).
Jury members:
Scoring criteria:
List of 40 selected artists will be published on the festival website and social media.
Public voting for favorite artist from the exhibition will take place Oct 24-26, 2025. Voting weight: 50% public, 50% jury.
Organizer awards 3 prizes:
After selection confirmation, artists receive instructions for shipping works. Artists must send works by deadline set by Organizer.
Proper packaging and shipping are artist's responsibility. Damaged or incomplete works will not be exhibited.
Artists bear full shipping costs, including return, and risks of damage or loss.
Artists residing in Bucharest must pick up works personally or via delegate after Nov 25, 2025, only with Organizer’s approval.
Works of non-Bucharest artists can be sent to a Romanian address at artist's request and expense. Organizer recommends professional art courier and insurance.
Personal information collected: name, photo, email, phone, website, social media profile to process registration and notify selection or request further info.
These details are not used commercially. Artist’s name, portfolio, social media, photo, and works will be published on www.collagefestival.ro to promote the artist.
After selection, Organizer will contact selected artists by email, Whatsapp group, or phone with next steps.
Participant names will appear in the exhibition as registered.
The Organizer and its Partners: Green Hours Association, Social Dialogue Group, and Creionetica have the right to record, publish, distribute, and broadcast images and multimedia content created for the Collage Festival event, including works by selected artists, for the purpose of promoting the current edition of the festival as well as future editions.
The Organizer may remove an artist from all promotional materials and from the Collage Festival exhibition if the requested information and materials are not submitted within the specified deadlines and if this affects the schedule and image of the Collage Festival.
For any questions or further clarifications, please contact the Organizer at the email address: hello@collagefestival.ro.
This project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for how the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
