uncommissioned is a site-responsive exhibition that engages with the city as both canvas and contested space. Operating outside the sanctioned circuits of commercial galleries and institutional patronage, the project reclaims urban infrastructure as a space for artistic intervention, proposing ephemeral, sculptural, and installation-based works that function as acts of spatial disruption, reclamation, and critique. Rather than occupying space in the manner of traditional public art, these works intervene—unsettling the expected order of the city, slipping between legibility and disappearance.
The exhibition positions itself against the logic of monumental permanence, instead embracing a mode of artistic production that is temporary, precarious, and deeply entangled with the lived realities of the city. By placing works within unconventional, interstitial, and often overlooked urban sites, uncommissioned gestures toward a politics of presence—one that acknowledges the ways in which bodies, histories, and labor are rendered invisible through the processes of gentrification, privatization, and spatial policing.
upcoming projects
ed. 1 / playground of the invisible
The city is full of absences. It edits out bodies, histories, and narratives that do not fit within its official choreography. Playground of the Invisible reclaims these omissions, turning the city into an arena where the unseen asserts itself—not through monumentality, but through play, subversion, and quiet insistence.
This spatial study invites artists to engage with who and what goes unnoticed in urban space: the labor that keeps the city running but remains unacknowledged, the architectures of exclusion that dictate who belongs where, and the populations rendered invisible through displacement, gentrification, and erasure.
What if the city were designed for those it ignores? What would its infrastructures look like? How might they invite new ways of moving, resting, and existing?
Rather than a spectacle of the invisible, this is a playground—an urban intervention where the overlooked is made present, sometimes with humor, sometimes with quiet defiance.
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:
Jerry Guo, Chuman Zhang, Stephanie Brown, Fiona Chang, Julian Ties
collaborators:
design team
Celina Gutierrez, Maksym Nezhoda, Sujin Park, Samuel Park
artist liaison team
Andrea Mondragón, Rania Daghmoura, Samuel Park, Zaida Ruby Lagunas, Leyla Apithy
produced & 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.