Lip Lines

Application Deadline -3rd of June 2026

Lips mark a boundary. As the soft edge between the body and the world, they are sites of intimacy and exposure, silence and speech, desire and control. It is through the lips that language is articulated, desire is enacted and identity is performed. Lip Lines considers lips as active agents within cultural, political and erotic systems, surfaces through which bodies are read, regulated and performed. Lips are coded with meaning: sexualised in advertising, disciplined through norms of beauty and weaponised in acts of silence and censorship. They operate as a critical threshold where language, desire and power converge.

Taking the lips as a site of both pleasure and pain, the exhibition positions them as a space of emotional and political intensity. What does it mean to speak through lips that is arbitrated by social and political codes? How can the lips operate as a site of resistance rather than compliance?

Lip Lines invites artists working across all media to engage with these themes. We are interested in practices that address the politics of voice, the construction of beauty and desire and the limits on expression, as well as those that push against containment through excess, distortion or refusal.

Exhibition Statement

Lip Lines

Naj Shirazi

Lips mark a boundary. As the soft edge between the body and the world, they are sites of intimacy and exposure, silence and speech, desire and control. It is through the lips that language is articulated, desire is enacted and identity is performed.

Lip Lines considers lips as active agents within cultural, political and erotic systems, surfaces through which bodies are read, regulated and performed. Lips are coded with meaning: sexualised in advertising, disciplined through norms of beauty and weaponised in acts of silence and censorship. They operate as a critical threshold where language, desire and power converge. 

Drawing from the “two lips” of Luce Irigaray, the lips propose a way of imagining the body—and a way of speaking—that does not follow rigid, male-centred structures, resisting linearity and singular form. They suggest something plural, self-touching, excessive and not easily contained. From this, a different language emerges: one that is articulated, distorted, withheld or refused. The tension between the eroticisation of lips and the suppression of speech remains central in the exhibition, particularly in relation to the gendered dynamics of visibility and voice, Lip Lines asks who gets to speak, and why.

The works in the exhibition move between limit and excess. They foreground the everyday, visceral experience of having lips, while also pushing the body beyond its limits. Lips become exaggerated, unstable: too painted, too wet, too open, too loud. Centring the body and lips and their vicerality, liberating it from patriarchal control and recreating their own aesthetics. Reflecting the grotesque and the excessive, the lips appear unruly, resisting containment and refusing to resolve into idealised form.

Lips, tongue and teeth recur as both form and function: speaking and silencing, kissing and biting, consuming and rejecting. These gestures trace the ways the mouth mediates between self and world—unstable, a shifting threshold. Here, the lips do not simply express; they interrupt, exceed and reconfigure the structures that seek to define them. Lip Lines foregrounds the lips as a site for speaking the unspoken, undoing and redefining fixed meanings, and imagining new forms of expression that resist appropriation and control.

Terms

• All submitted work must be original

• Artists are responsible for all shipping costs (delivery and return), unless otherwise agreed

• Plazuli takes 15 % commission on sales

Artwork Handling & Liability

Plazuli will handle all artworks with the utmost care and respect. However, Plazuli cannot be held responsible for any damage, loss, or unforeseen incidents that may occur during transportation, installation, exhibition, or deinstallation.

Participation Fees

Upon acceptance, selected artists are required to pay a participation fee based on their selection category:

• Publication — €55
  Includes feature in the Plazuli Digest (printed and digital publication), distributed to galleries , creative platforms and curators

• Exhibition — €120
  Participation in the exhibition is by invitation only, extended to a select group of artists from the open call.
  This includes participation in a 1 week long exhibition in Barcelona ( July , 2026 ), as well as inclusion in the Plazuli Digest at no additional cost

Magazine Feature

One selected artist will be featured in a partner magazine (to be announced). Selection is made at the discretion of the curatorial team and collaborating partners.

What the Fees Cover

• Curatorial development and selection

• Design and production of the publication

• Exhibition space and installation

• Public relations and marketing support

• Professional documentation of the project

Acceptance & Payment

Acceptance is confirmed only once the participation fee has been received. Failure to complete payment by the stated deadline may result in forfeiture of the selected position.