Open Call: Noorderlicht Biennale Play! 2027
Noorderlicht
Who can submit?
Photographers and lens-based artists of all nationalities, ages and career stages, individually or as a collective. Emerging artists and recent graduates are as welcome as established artists. Students are also welcome to apply. Additionally, there will be a dedicated open call for students, announced in spring 2027.
What’s the theme?
PLAY! The Biennale treats play as serious and political: a way to understand the world and question its structures. It looks at how digital platforms have turned play into a business model, and how artists can reclaim play for imagination, agency and connection.
What can be submitted?
Any work in which the image or the lens plays a central role:
Photography, video and film
Installation and projection
Interactive and game-based work
Publications and hybrid forms
*AI-generated and generative work is eligible only if the submission clearly states how it was made, including the tools, models and process used.
Categories
Each project must be submitted under one of the following three categories:
Existing work: work that has already been shown publicly.
Adaptation of existing work: existing work that you propose to adapt specifically for PLAY, for example in scale, form or installation.
New work/proposal: a new project or a work in progress that has not been shown or commissioned before. Please include a clear plan, sketches or test images, and an indication of production needs.
Please note that we have limited capacity to support adaptations of existing works and the production of new works.
You can submit multiple projects across categories, but each needs to be a separate submission.
What do selected artists receive?
Around 75 artists will be selected to exhibit at PLAY! Biennale. It opens in September 2027 in venues across Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe, including the Fries Museum and THEA in Niemeyer.
Selection includes:
A fee in accordance with the Artist Fee Guideline (Richtlijn Kunstenaarshonorarium)
€640 for existing work
€1,485 for adaptation of existing work
€3,179 for new work / proposal
Production of all work (in the case of photographs - framing and prints in Noorderlicht’s own print lab).
Insurance and transport of works
National and international press exposure
ABOUT
Noorderlicht Biennale PLAY!
Biennale PLAY! opens in September 2027 across the three northern Dutch provinces: Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe. Following Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens, the Biennale treats play as a way of understanding the world and questioning its structures, not as a pastime. Digital platforms have turned play into a business model built on scrolling, scoring and chance. PLAY asks what happens when artists take play back: as a tool for imagination, agency and connection, and as a political question about who gets to play and on whose terms.
PLAY! asks questions such as:
1. Who determines the rules of the game, and who has the space to interpret, change, or refuse them? From social systems to the platforms and technologies through which images are made, shared, and valued.
2. What happens when play is expected to generate data, attention, performance, or economic value? And conversely: what does play look like when it does not have to produce anything at all, and what does that reveal?
3. What other roles, relationships, and realities can play temporarily make possible? Can technology, error, chance, and glitch become part of the game in ways that create proximity and empathy, and allow us to imagine other ways of living together?
Around 75 artists will be selected, from established names to emerging makers and recent graduates, working in photography, video, installation and other lens-based media. Curated by Marijn Bril & Grażyna Siedlecka, under the artistic direction of Roosje Klap.
Noorderlicht
Noorderlicht has been a platform for photography and lens-based media in Groningen, the Netherlands, since 1989. What began in the late 1980s as a small photo gallery in a student cultural centre in Groningen led in 1990 to the first Noorderlicht Photo Festival. Since then Noorderlicht has grown into one of the leading photography platforms in the Netherlands, known for its thematic international exhibitions and festivals in which photographers tell a strong social story. Over the years Noorderlicht has presented large exhibitions on Africa, the Arab world and the Levant, South America, Asia and the former Eastern Bloc, and has given a stage to renowned international photographers and emerging talents alike.
Today Noorderlicht works along three lines: presentation, research and education. It runs its own gallery and print lab at the Akerkhof in Groningen and a gallery on the island of Vlieland in Fryslân, and presents a Biennale across the three northern provinces of Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe. Noorderlicht is led by Roosje Klap, general and artistic director since 2024.
Mission
Noorderlicht uses photography and lens-based media to record, question and rewrite reality. The image is always the starting point for dialogue and reflection on urgent social and technological questions. The current programme (2024 to 2028) looks at how technology, image culture and power are entangled: the influence of algorithms, AI and digital networks on how we see and are seen, and the value of craft and bodily knowledge in a digital world. Noorderlicht brings international artistic discourse to the north and gives artists from the region a place within it. Its core values are accessibility, connection, visibility and transparency.