When you submit work to a juried show and it gets declined, do you check out the show after it’s up (either online or in person)? Or is your attitude more along the lines of trying to forget about the rejection letter and moving on to other things?
For as long as I have been applying for shows, my feelings aligned with the latter, and I didn’t see much value in dwelling on what felt like missed opportunities. In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten curious about jurors’ and curators’ tastes and what work fits what they’re looking for, and why my work sometimes has not.
Assuming that we are meeting the basic entry requirements for a show (providing excellent images of strong work, fitting our statements into word count limits, etc.), there are two main reasons I’ve noticed for why my (and probably also your own) work hasn’t been included in juried shows. One of them may surprise you.
The least surprising reason for a rejection: the work doesn’t fit with the whole of the show. This can be a case of “the juror just didn’t like it,” but it can also be more subtle, relating to slight formal or conceptual mismatches. One of the first things I look for when I am trying to figure out why my work didn’t get into a show is the exhibition’s overall formal vibe; often, my colorful, graphic work presents a glaring contrast to a group of work that has softer edges or more muted colors.
Conceptual mismatches can be harder to pinpoint, and if a juror provides a statement about their selections, this is helpful. I recently submitted work that was declined from a ‘nature’ themed show, and even after reading the juror’s statement and viewing the accepted work, I was struggling to determine why my work was not a fit. I was about to chalk it up to “they just didn’t like it,” (which may also have been the case) when I finally realized that all of the works in the show were speaking to broader topics relating to the natural world, like climate change, sustainability, etc., while my work instead presents a quirky microcosm that is more about a single moment in time.
After I realized this, it seemed obvious, but it can be difficult to consider our work objectively. This kind of thinking is valuable, because considering why our work isn’t included in a show can point us towards contexts that will be a better fit.
A more surprising reason for our work’s rejection from a show: our work is already in the show. By this, I mean there is work included in the show that is visually very similar to ours. “Very” is subjective and sometimes hard to determine because we are able to attune to all the ways our work stands out that may not be as apparent to a juror, especially when they have just viewed 599 other applications. In this case, there may also be something else in the application packet that gives the selected work a leg up. For example, if CV’s are part of the application requirements, the selected artist’s CV may be more developed than our own.
This happened to me several years ago, when I noted in a group show I had been rejected from work that, like my own, was very colorful, with graphic edges and lots of patterns. However, I knew this artist’s name and was even familiar with curatorial projects they had developed. It was easy to see that while my work might have filled the same visual slot as this artist’s, their more prestigious CV could add value to the group exhibition in a way that mine could not.
It is always disappointing to get a rejection letter for an opportunity that we want, but if we take the time to consider the larger picture of where our work fits (or doesn’t) and why, we may* be able to pick better suited opportunities going forward.
*To some degree, applying for things is always a roll of the dice. But we only have a chance at getting the things that we do apply for.
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