• Manifest - Waxworks: An International Call for Works Made of, Using, or About Wax
• Deadline: October 14th 2023
• Prize: $1,000 + Exhibition
• Category: Visual Arts
• Entry Fees: Yes
• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE
Wax’s capacity to mimic the surface, sheen, and luminosity of living flesh lends its use to the uncanny.
Life-like wax sculptures used to be sacrificed in lieu of material goods. Early anatomical instruction was performed using wax simulacra of human viscera.
Its texture rests on the knife edge between attractive and repulsive; The surface is inviting, but touch it for too long and you will feel it soften under the low heat of your hands.
That same softness, the ability to be warmed and shaped allows it to become a sketch material, a molding material, something easily shaped or carved.
Wax gives an idea form, and then it is sacrificed, lost, inside the very mold it shapes, burned out and flooded with liquid bronze, silver. An alchemic transformation.
It is one of the oldest painting mediums, with its own quality of light, its distinctive smell.
Wax preserves, mimics, warms, melts, softens, molds, runs, burns, and fuels.
WAXWORKS will be an exhibition of artworks made with, using, of, or about wax in all its forms. It is open to encaustic painting, sculpture, lost-wax processes, or any other media involving or depicting wax.