Breathing with An Other: Exhibition Library
Open Call for Contributions
What does it mean to breathe with an other? How might we understand breath as a practice of relation, care, and collective survival? Opening in Spring 2027, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality will present Breathing with An Other, an exhibition featuring artworks by Simone Leigh, Chitra Ganesh, Rebecca Belmore, and Cassils that explore embodiment, interdependence, and the many ways we come into relation with one another.
As part of Breathing with An Other, the Exhibition Library brings together a growing collection of artworks, publications, archival materials, ephemera, writing, and other contributions that invite us to think across histories, communities, and forms of knowledge. Located within the exhibition space, the Library will gather writing and creative responses developed in conversation with the exhibition’s themes and artists.
Extending the exhibition beyond the gallery, the Library will serve as a site of collective study, reflection, and exchange—bringing together different forms of research, storytelling, and knowledge production. Rather than a static archive, it will remain an evolving space for encountering, sharing, and building knowledge together.
The Exhibition Library approaches the gallery as a living site of inquiry, inviting visitors and contributors to encounter, add to, and transform the materials gathered within it. Through their contributions, participants are invited to “breathe with an other”: to enter into relation with different forms of knowledge, experience, and creative practice, and to consider breath as a practice of exchange, care, and collective meaning-making.
The Exhibition Library welcomes contributions from undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, artists, community members, and writers across disciplines and backgrounds. We invite submissions in a variety of forms, including but not limited to:
- critical essays and research-based writing
- theoretical and reflective essays
- reading responses
- archival and historical research
- zines, pamphlets, and artists’ publications
- poetry and creative writing
- visual essays
- experimental and hybrid forms
- postcards and other printed matter
- annotated bibliographies and resource lists
- suggested books, articles, and other materials for inclusion in the Exhibition Library
Contributions may engage with the broader themes, questions, and modes of inquiry explored by Breathing with An Other. The suggested themes below are intended as points of departure rather than strict categories, and contributors are encouraged to approach them through a wide range of disciplinary, creative, and experimental methods.
- breath, embodiment, and the body
- mourning, survival, and collective care
- feminist, queer, and trans forms of kinship
- performance, duration, and presence
- archives, memory, and counter-histories
- migration, displacement, and belonging
- radical rest
- race, colonialism, and political struggle
- relationality and interdependence
- public scholarship and collective study
- artistic practice as a mode of knowledge production
Following selection, CSGS will be in touch with contributors regarding formatting, editing, production, and presentation details. Contributors who are submitting existing printed materials for inclusion in the Library will coordinate drop-off or delivery with CSGS. For digital contributions or materials that require printing or preparation, CSGS will work with selected contributors to determine appropriate formats, printing needs, and modes of presentation within the Exhibition Library.
Submission Deadline: January 29, 2027
Contributors are also invited to participate in a series of workshops organized by CSGS’s Intersectional Feminist / Queer Studies Collective throughout Fall 2026. These gatherings will explore themes connected to Breathing with An Other and may support the development of new writing, creative responses, and research materials for inclusion in the Exhibition Library. Workshop participation is not required in order to submit a contribution.
Featured Event
Cut, Copy, Queer: A Zine-Making Workshop
a zine-making workshop with Zahra’a Nasralla
Featured Event
Sex Work Archives
a workshop with archivist Amalia Valentine
Featured Event
Hot Topics: A Workshop on Trans & Queer Publishing
a workshop on Queer and Trans scholarship and publishing
