ed. 1 / playground of the invisible
The city is full of blank spots—stories paved over, people pushed aside, memories painted the color of new concrete. This year’s theme flips that erasure on its head. Instead of erecting another monument, we invite artists to slip playful, overlooked, or quietly defiant gestures into the cracks of everyday life. Think a parking barrier turned into a sky-mirror, a lullaby looping from a forgotten pay phone, or scribbled text that only appears at night.
By reclaiming the overlooked, we ask a simple question:
What would a city built for the unseen look like? The answers arrive as fleeting installations that make you do a double take, then leave you wondering how you ever walked past that space without noticing.
Together we’ll turn absence into a game of discovery.
how it unfolds
Monthlong concurrent exhibitions
Each curator selects a specific area of inquiry and works with a group of artists to develop interventions responding to their thematic framework. In the spirit of invisibility, while artworks will be installed concurrently before day 1, no official unveiling will occur and locations of the installations will not be revealed. Images of the artwork will be released online.
Audience participation encouraged
The general public should ideally stumble upon these pieces of artwork while going about their everyday lives. If an artwork is discovered and tagged #uncommissioned online, we will release the location in an updated global map. On day 30, artwork will be open to sale / patronage, with 100% of the proceeds going to the artist and the work turned over to the public domain (with a placard placed next to the artwork and online).
Open to all mediums
All forms of artistic intervention are welcome—so long as they engage with the city as material, context, or site. Artists working in sculpture, installation, sound, text, video, performance, digital media, and beyond are invited to reconsider the role of their practice outside of traditional exhibition models. Whether it is a fleeting action or a visual disruption, uncommissioned is open to any work that leave a mark—visible or otherwise.
Any public space is fair game
The city itself is the exhibition space. This means works can emerge in alleys, transit stations, vacant lots, parks, forgotten infrastructure, or spaces in plain sight that go unnoticed. This open framework allows artists to embed, camouflage, or assert their work in ways that feel appropriate to their concept, thereby challenging notions of who has the right to alter or imprint upon the urban landscape. Art, like the city, belongs to those who inhabit it.
who we are
uncommissioned is a curatorial project by Nōvo Collective, an artist-run platform dedicated to rethinking how art operates in public space. For this inaugural edition, the project is led by Novo team, collaborators and volunteers working across time zones, and disciplines. It’s a collective effort built on shared questions, late-night calls, and a belief in the power of art to quietly interrupt, reframe, and reclaim the spaces we move through every day.
NOVO TEAM:
Executive producer: Chuman Zhang
Creative director: Jerry Guo
Assistant producer: Rania Daghmoura
Design Team
Website full stack development: Celina Gutierrez, Maksym Nezhoda, Samuel Park, Mina Yaqoob
Graphic & motion design: Sujin Park, Shiyu Angel Shen
Video editing: Yao Xiongyuan, Liu Yuhan, Mike Daitch
Artist Liaison Team
Andrea Mondragón, Samuel Park, Zaida Ruby Lagunas, Stephanie Brown
PRODUCED AND SUPPORTED BY:
Nōvo Collective
An experimental curatorial platform supporting artist-led models of production, circulation, and collaboration. www.novocollective.org
Fiscal Sponsorship
uncommissioned is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports creative projects across disciplines. This allows us to receive tax-deductible donations and public grants while remaining nimble and independent.
Supported By
uncommissioned is made possible through the generous support of forward-thinking organizations, partners, and collaborators who believe in redefining public art.
Join the Effort
Public space belongs to all of us, but it takes vision, labor, and resources to keep it alive. uncommissioned is built with artists, collaborators, and supporters who believe in reshaping how art meets the world.
Your support fuels this movement—keeping it independent, experimental, and impossible to ignore. Join us and help rewrite what public art can be.