about RICE
Created in Barcelona in 2020, RICE Initiative is an independent curatorial platform with the mission of creating opportunities of visibility, exposure and sales for underrepresented artists, more specifically women, members of the LGTBQ community and racialized persons.
RICE management team
Daniela Zamora · Founder, Artistic and Executive Director
Daniel Rojas · Art Advisor & Staff Curator
Tyler Bilschic · Art Advisor
Carolina Castilho · Researcher
Lola Rodríguez · Administrative Assistant
Natalia Jiménez · Graphic Design Manager
Mia Raičević · Chief Curator for PORTRAYALS OF FLESH Open Call
RICE-ing to the challenge
Thus, RICE Initiative acts in the six fronts where most action is needed:
Open Calls · RICE actively creates opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists on a continuous basis. We launch a new open call each quarter aiming to select vibrant artworks within a minimum quota system: at least 70% of selected artists are to be women or members of the LGTBQ community or racialized persons, and no more than 30% of selected artists are to be cisgender males.
Yes, we favor women artists and artists pertaining to other discriminated groups but we do not exclude male artists. Our objective is to reverse the current state of favoritism towards the traditionally privileged in mainstream contemporary art, by exercising positive discrimination while still leaving room for male artists and curators to be a part of this initiative.
And even though we’d love to reach these quotas, we have observed that less than 5% of candidates pertaining to the latter group. Hopefully, this will change in the future and more cisgender males will participate.RICE Magazine · All shortlisted artists discovered through our open calls are featured in RICE’s online magazine, along with exclusive interviews with more established artists, and articles by distinguished art professionals, giving each issue greater momentum.
Gallery Exhibitions · Partnering up with mainstream galleries across Europe and other successful online projects, RICE organizes exhibits on a quarterly basis showcasing artists discovered through our open calls.
Online Auctions · We also offer the possibility to shortlisted artists to sell their work through online auctions, in partnership with Liveauctioneers.com, one of the leading online auction platforms in the world.
The Feedback Program · Because we believe in making the art world a better place, we know that starts with more equality and inclusion of underrepresented artists, but also with doing what no other organization is doing, which is helping our candidates understand why their proposals were unsuccessful and how to improve their professional standing. To this end, we have reached out to a growing list of vetted Artist Consultants and Artist Coaches, so that all the artists who are not selected can receive career-focused feedback about their proposals. The idea is for candidates to receive constructive advice of improvement for the future, not about their art or style, but about how to improve the way they present themselves professionally.
Sales Promotion · And last but not least, aside from promoting artists in our magazine, website, social media and connecting them to auction opportunities and gallery exhibitions, the RICE team strives to carry out public relations for each of our activities in order to promote the sales of the artists we discover through our open calls.
a seed for change
Guerrilla Girls have been denouncing it since the mid-1980s: exclusion, discrimination and corruption in the art world for gender, sexual identity and racial reasons is a real thing. Hundreds of projects aiming to counter these unjust practices have emerged since.
We are a new version of it.
One that is tired of exposés and scandalous statistics* pointing out how roughly 70% of exhibited artists, in both art galleries and museums around the world, are male and only 30% are female, even though enrollment in university-level art programs reflect the opposite statistics. One that takes actions aimed at correcting a system that naturally tends to disregard artworks made by women, LGTBQ and racialized artists.
RICE was born as a seed to reverse this, an initiative seeking to generate tangible opportunities of visibility, exposure and promotion in order to actively change the situation.
*Source: “Get the facts”, National Museum of Women in the Arts
but why RICE and not CORN you ask?
The name RICE was originally an acronym for Reversing Initiative to Counter the Exclusion of women and other discriminated groups in the art world. But, as you can see, we are so much more than that.