Editorial Mandate

ESPACE art actuel’s issues comprise a thematic dossier, two sections titled Practices and Perspectives, and contemporary art book reviews. The dossier’s articles and the reviews are selected following a call for paper, while Practices and Perspectives are based on invitations from the editorial board.

Thematic Dossier:
Call for Papers:
The calls for the thematic dossier are published three times a year (February, May, and October). Authors interested in submitting a text must send 1) a 250-word proposal, 2) two excerpts from previously published texts, and 3) commit to being available for the editing process*. Upon receiving the approval of the editorial committee, authors can begin writing. Unless otherwise specified, authors will submit an unpublished, original text of 1500/2,000 words, excluding footnotes.

If you are an emerging author (with little or no publishing experience), we can support you with other activities providing greater flexibility and assistance**. If you are an artist, please find an author to cover your practice in an essay, a review, or an interview. The editorial team only considers proposals for written contributions. However, you are welcome to share your work with the team, always on the lookout for new projects.

* The editorial committee meets two to three weeks after the submission deadline. The editorial process follows and includes receiving the committee’s retroaction, editorial revision and copy-editing. These successive steps take about a month.

** These activities are detailed under “Online platform”.

Proposals are sent by email to gcorto[@]espaceartactuel.com, and include a short biography (80-100 words).

How to submit articles:
Original articles must be sent by email to gcorto@espaceartactuel.com. Their word-count should be around 1,500 and 2,000 words (excluding footnotes), and they should include subtitles (optional), footnotes (ideally fewer than 20), and your mailing address. Bibliographies are not permitted.

Submission deadlines for the completed articles, following an approval from the committee, are January 10 (Spring), April 15 (Autumn), and September 1 (Winter).

Decision-making process:
Texts are submitted to the editorial board. They are chosen based on their relevance to the journal’s mandate and the thematic dossier, the clarity of the argument, the quality of the analysis, the originality of the point of view, and the complementarity of the proposal.

We ask authors to disclose any potential conflicts of interest: serving on the board of directors of the organization covered by the text, curating the exhibition or event under review, being represented by the gallery featured, or being a member of the organization, etc.

Proposals for future thematic dossier:
The editorial team accepts proposals for themes once a year, on March 1. Proposals will be reviewed at the annual editorial committee meeting.

Proposals must include 1) a 500-word description of the theme and its treatment, 2) a short bibliography to capture the theoretical and conceptual framework of the proposal, and 3) a list of five artistic practices deemed exemplary of this approach. You may submit a proposal as an initiator or as a future co-editor: please indicate your preference.

Practices:
Practices is a section focusing on curatorial practices. Curator(s) and artist(s) – who previously collaborated on an exhibition – critically reflect on the challenges posed by the installation and the adaptation of the artworks in the space(s) and its context(s), whether historical, geographical, topographical, architectural, institutional, etc. 

Perspectives:
Perspectives is a section bringing together two reviews written by authors on a major event in the art world. Diverse perspectives opened up by an exhibition, a biennale, or an event are thus showcased, as well as different approaches to art criticism.

Writing Rate:
The current rate is $70 per 250-word page (excluding footnotes), up to a maximum of $560. Authors also receive a copy of the issue in which their article appeared, and a one-year digital subscription.

The Reading Room on our website welcomes reviews, critical essays, articles by emergent writers (selected as part of various programs), a column on public art and book reviews. 

To contribute, you must send a 250-word proposal with the subject, exhibition dates if necessary, the approach taken, and two 500-word excerpts from previously published texts (in other magazines, journals, or newspapers). You can submit a proposal throughout the year. The editorial board can refuse any text that would require too much editing, even if the proposal has been accepted in advance.

Exhibition reviews:
Exhibition reviews must 1) cover an exhibition that has an impact on local communities (Indigenous, settler, diasporic, immigrant) in the territories designated as “Canada” and 2) relate to the polysemic notions of space and spatiality, whether expressed through the mediums (sculpture, installation, urban interventions), the curatorial approach, or through the conceptual or theoretical perspective adopted by the authors. Reviews cover exhibitions that are currently on view or have ended within the last month.

Please allow three weeks between submission and publication: authors agree to be available for the editing and copy-editing process. The submission date is set with the editorial team, and the text should be between 750 and 1,000 words, excluding footnotes (which should be kept to a minimum).

Essays:
Essays cover a practice, an exhibition or an event in retrospect or a wider issue in the art world.

Three weeks should be allowed between submission and publication: authors agree to be available for the editing and copy-editing process. The submission date is set with the editorial team, and the text is 1,000 words, excluding footnotes (kept to a minimum).

Emerging authors:
ESPACE has developed various initiatives to support emerging critics. It collaborates with the University of Montreal (Critiques de la relève), the University of Quebec in Outaouais (Concours Jean-Pierre-Latour), the Association des groupes en arts visuels francophones (AGAVF), and the artist-run center CLARK (Contemporary Art Writing Laboratory). The texts resulting from these collaborations are published under “Collaborations.” For more details on the terms and conditions of each partnership, please email Gina Cortopassi (gcorto[@]espaceartactuel.com).

Column on public art and urban practices:
The column “Art in Public” is published three times a year by an author invited by the editorial committee. Texts may cover public artworks, performative interventions, permanent or temporary installations, or collective gatherings in public spaces.

Book Reviews:
Book Reviews are between 300 to 350 words in length and they cover recent publications in the contemporary art world whose subject matter is related to the magazine’s mandate or its immediate communities (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). ESPACE covers exhibition catalogs, artists’ books, and scholarly publications, as opposed to novels, fiction, autofiction, or poetry collections.

Writing rate for Online Articles:
The writing rate is $70 per 250-word page (excluding footnotes), up to a maximum of $280.

ESPACE art actuel, n° 145 (Winter 2027)

Subject: Labours of Love/Par amour

The expression “labours of love” traditionally refers to the behind-the-scenes work carried out by women and racialized people, often associated with domestic labour and caregiving. This invisible and “vocational” work, though essential to sustaining our communities, families, and friendships, is rarely remunerated or even valued. This is because such labours of love are presumed to yield their own intangible rewards, in addition to being perceived as a natural extension of what is understood by “femininity.” The expression stems from a 1975 essay by the feminist theorist Silvia Federici, and despite the progress that feminists past and present have made to de-gender this division of labour and to have it recognized as such, its relevance persists and continues to evolve. Several contemporary feminist critics have highlighted the potential pitfalls of this struggle for the institutional and economic recognition of care work, which would thereby become monetizable in productivist and measurable metrics, opening the door to the quantification of gains, including affective ones (Emma Dowling, 2016: 453). 

This material division of labour is also reflected in the arts and culture sector. The figure of the artist is associated with sacrifice, passion, and vocation: precarious working and living conditions are seen as legitimate for most people, thanks to an individualistic narrative centred on personal choice.  Engagement in the arts and culture is thus synonymous with a self-imposed vulnerability and poverty, for which the individual bears full responsibility—and whose ability to merit their salary, material comforts, and visibility is entirely up to them. However, this perspective obscures the systemic dynamics at play and the ways in which the precarious conditions of artists, curators, and cultural workers are essential to the smooth functioning of a sector that is chronically underfunded, except for a select few. It also belies its ideological foundations.

Several artists have examined their working conditions in their artworks. In 2024, during a residency at Céline Bureau the artist Camille Zoé Valcourt-Synnott conducted a series of interviews with artists and cultural workers to find out what jobs they had held to support their creative practice. Artistes précaires (2024) thus brought together a series of these job lists, supplemented by Valcourt-Synnott’s handwritten notes and traces of visitors’ participation in the gallery. According to the artist, the project draws parallels between cultural work and care work, as the majority of the jobs listed on paper also fall within the realm of “care”—teaching, cooking, maintenance, service work, etc. This work follows a performance titled The Employee (2021), created in collaboration with artist Joshua Schwebel. For one year, and in front of an audience,Valcourt-Synnott—employed by Schwebel—wrote grant applications for the Forest City Gallery (London, Ontario) and performed administrative tasks related to the management of the arts centre. The archives of this performance, along with all the emails that the performer wrote in this context, have been compiled into a book of the same name, supplemented by critical essays on the topic of labour in the cultural sector.

In the recent exhibition Imagine les dauphins en grève (2026) presented at the Galerie d’art du Parc, the artist Fanny Latreille recounts the story of U.T.I.L., a fictional artists’ union founded in the 1980s that survived the gradual erosion of a social consensus on the benefits of the welfare state and the common good. Latreille tells the story of two dolphins, who died of starvation during the blue-collar strike, as a springboard to reflect on the history of artists’ social struggles and the potential for solidarity with other workers and creatures. At the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, curator Ingrid Jones’s exhibition LABOUR (2026) explores the challenges of care work from the perspective of Black, Afro-descendant, and racialized artists. In her exhibition, divided into three rooms—Labour, Rage, Rest—the curator brings to light the anger and frustration associated with the labour of the “colonized,” who bear the implicit responsibility of educating the dominant culture about their distinct realities, supporting vulnerable members of their communities, as well as championing and representing the issues of diversity and inclusion. In using discomfort as a curatorial strategy, the exhibition transposes this work (of education, interpretation, and connection) onto the viewers and raises a broader question: whom are we truly “caring for” when we carry out our projects? Artists, curators, audiences, donors, etc.?

The Labours of Love issue thus explores the invisible work that underpins artistic careers and arts and culture support services, from a feminist and decolonial perspective. How do artists represent, subvert, and combat precariousness, self-entrepreneurship, and isolation? What solutions underpin their aesthetic and political proposals, carried out for love? Resignation, strike, disidentification, union, or transfer?

A second, important section of this issue explores the interconnected experiences of love and passion. Even though working conditions are often precarious, art and the communities that emerge around works— their creation, dissemination, and preservation—continue to renew themselves, flourish, and express solidarity. What’s behind this persistence and vitality of the arts and culture? Love, perhaps?

For this section, we seek submissions that explore our connections to the arts—to artists, curators, critics, and venues—to counterbalance the criticism, struggle, and anger sparked by the violence of the discordant socio-economic system into which we have been thrown. The Labours of Love thematic issue thus aims to make visible and tangible what drives our communities, our spaces, and our writing. What aspects of your encounters with art have transformed your practices (artistic, curatorial, authorial), your perspectives, and your emotional, theoretical, and conceptual worlds? What internal dialogues with the art world shape your current engagements? Which works have stirred you, which curator or art critic inspires you, and what gives you the strength to keep going, to dream, despite everything?

If you wish to contribute to this thematic issue, please send an email to the magazine’s co-executive director and editorial director (gcorto@espaceartactuel.com) before June 29th, 2026, with a short proposal (250 words). We will inform you quickly if your proposal is chosen. Your complete essay must not be more than 2,000 words, depending on the type of proposal, footnotes not included, and be submitted before September 4th, 2026. The honorarium is now CA$70 per page (250 words).

Upcoming Calls for Papers:
October 2026 for Somatics (Spring 2027)
February 2027 for Dissident Design (Autumn 2027)