Call to Artists: Submit Work for Upcoming Show at NUNU Arts and Culture Collective
For Immediate Release
Refuge: The Courage to Witness is a multidisciplinary initiative that explores what keeps us disconnected from suffering and conflict and from recognizing the potential for healing and peace. Initiated by Hagit Barkai, Associate Professor of Art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, in collaboration with the NUNU Art and Culture Collective, the project aims to connect global and local issues while fostering communication around personal and societal healing during times of conflict. It serves as a catalyst for growth, bridging the distance between global conflict, community concerns, and the transformative power of healing through art and dialogue.
The project includes a solo exhibition by visual artist Hagit Barkai, a group exhibition, creative panel discussions, and community conversations featuring performances, storytelling, ceremonies, and dialogues led by local artists, community leaders and trauma‑informed Collective Intelligence facilitators.
The main exhibition showcases a series of Hagit Barkai’s paintings that focus on themes of conflict and healing dialectics related to the war in Gaza, exploring the mechanisms that block our understanding of conflict and pathways to healing. These works delve into denial mechanisms, isolation, and the illusion of separateness, situated at the intersection of personal and collective responsibility, victim and victimizer, trauma and privilege, as well as erasure and the production of personal and collective history. It asks what painting choices can be made to shift from enmeshed reactivity, denial, escape, and complicity toward the ability to respond to human suffering, recognize shared fragility that binds people across borders and identities, and reconnect to human dignity.
The open call for the group exhibition, Side By Side / Piece By Peace, is open to artists in any media and works should explore refuge as an act of resistance, a catalyst for peace, and a space for collective healing.
Refuge: The Courage to Witness is supported by the Acadiana Center for the Arts ArtSpark Grant, funded by the Lafayette Economic Development Authority and the National Endowment of the Arts.
Location:
NUNU Art and Culture Collective, 1510 Courtableau Hwy 1510 Courtableau Hwy, Arnaudville, LA 70512
Important dates:
Submission Deadline: February 9, 2026
Exhibition Dates: March 6 to May 4, 2026
Opening night including Panel and Symposium: Friday, March 13, 6-9PM
Submission Now Open:
https://acadiana.culturalyst.com/opportunities/2083
For more information, contact Hagit Barkai on hb@hagitbarkai.com
www.hagitbarkai.com/refuge
About the Artist
Hagit Barkai is a visual artist and a Peace Activation facilitator whose work explores the body as a site of vulnerability, resistance, and connection. She works primarily in painting, alongside drawing, printmaking, and photo-performance directing. Her art explores the awkwardness of the body as it moves through social expectations, layering form and formlessness to reveal the body’s ambivalence. The figures she paints embody both comfort and discomfort, acceptance and resistance, safeguarding the freedom to change. Exploring art as a placeholder for peacebuilding, she uses her artistic practice as a bridge across divides and an invitation to dialogue where words fall short.