Global Artist Search - TED x POSCA x Fine Acts (Due July 31)
Global Artist Search - TED x POSCA x Fine Acts
Deadline: July 31st, 2026
A NEW TYPE OF RESIDENCY LAUNCHES
TED, the global platform for ideas and storytelling, and POSCA, a creative brand by uni Brands Corporation, are launching a new kind of artist residency: a globally distributed cohort of artists working across different geographies, cultures, and communities, united by a shared drive to shape public life through art.
Fine Acts, the external curatorial partner selected by TED & POSCA, is leading the curation, creative direction, and coordination of the initiative.
Today, we are announcing a global artist search to identify the first participating artists.
There is no single location. No central studio. Instead:
Selected artists work within their own communities
They follow a shared creative constraint – a unifying conceptual framework around repair, hope, and beauty
Projects unfold in public space
Community participation is key part of the work
Process matters as much as outcome
2026 THEME: VISIBLE MENDING
This year’s residency theme, Visible Mending, explores repair as a creative and civic act. Inspired in part by Kintsugi – the Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with gold – the theme invites artists to consider how wounds, ruptures, and imperfections can become sites of transformation rather than something to hide.
Across communities around the world, people are finding ways to mend relationships, restore ecosystems, strengthen social bonds, and rebuild trust. We invite artists to investigate these processes of repair and make them visible through public interventions that spark reflection, dialogue, and collective imagination.
In 2026, four artists will be selected to develop community-rooted public interventions to be implemented in 2027. Each selected artist will receive a total of USD $15,000 to cover artist fees, production costs/community activation, and documentation of the work.
While the term of the residency is one year, this initiative will run for multiple years, expanding the cohort year by year (2027, 2028, and 2029), while building an evolving global archive of civic artistic interventions connected through a shared conceptual framework.