Call for Artists for Food Sovereignty – Nyéléni Edition | Systemic Transformation is NOW or NEVER!
In April 2025, during the 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum—the most important event of the global movement for food sovereignty, systemic transformation, and justice for all—the Nyéléni Virtual Gallery will be launched as a space for committed artists engaged in popular struggles. So far, the Nyéléni process has united small-scale food producers, including farmers, fishers, and pastoralists, alongside Indigenous Peoples, feminist groups, racialized communities, academics, and human rights defenders from around the world. Now is the time to strengthen our alliances and join forces with others who resist the oppression of the system.
Call for Artists!
We invite artists from all backgrounds to submit their works in various formats by January 31, 2025, for the “Call: Artists for Food Sovereignty – Nyéléni Edition.”
This year, our goal is to broaden the call to encompass interconnected struggles for global justice and systemic transformation, emphasizing that art and culture are vital forms of resistance and activism. The Nyéléni virtual gallery builds upon and expands the project initiated by La Vía Campesina (2021) and will be presented at the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum in 2025. The selected works will be crucial for our defense and mobilization, igniting collective reflection and challenging dominant narratives.
The Intersectionality of the Process
This call for artists aims to strengthen our convergences as social movements advocating for food sovereignty, the protection of our territories and bodies, labor rights, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, consumers, and small producers, as well as the struggles for climate and environmental justice, social and solidarity economies, peace with social justice, and health and housing for all—both in rural and urban contexts.
This is our challenge for the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum: when we meet, it will be time to outline common agendas and strategies to halt the global crises caused by this capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal system. With art and culture as tools of struggle, we are convinced that we can foster the necessary dialogue to advance toward systemic transformation, leaving no one behind.
Culture and Our Struggle
Just as food, housing, and health are fundamental rights, so is culture—a powerful tool of protest. Through it, we challenge the false narratives promoted by neoliberal and neocolonial governments, alongside their agribusiness and extractivist multinationals.
To better understand the connection between culture and our struggles, let’s examine the root of the word “culture,” which comes from the verb “to cultivate.” Originally, it referred to human labor in relation to nature—how people planted, harvested, and produced to meet their needs. Over time, “culture” evolved to encompass the cultivation of the soul and senses, linked to artistic practices, yet it has always maintained its connection to nature and essential human bonds.
In the face of a capitalist logic that prioritizes profits over life, our struggles rise up, defending the reproduction of life, embracing popular forms, cultural diversity, and the transformative power of the peoples.
Artists, Raise Your Voice!
The “Artists for Food Sovereignty – Nyéléni Edition” call invites a wide range of productions in various formats: songs, music videos, poems, paintings, photographs, illustrations, documentaries, podcasts, etc. After the submission deadline on January 31, 2025, the materials will be curated for a virtual exhibition in April 2025. These will also be showcased in a physical exhibition during the 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum.
To support the creative process, we suggest five thematic axes for submissions, which can be original works or previous creations aligned with these themes:
- The Challenges that Unite Us: Capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, militarization, and patriarchy exploit our lives and devastate our territories. Together, we wield food sovereignty and justice as weapons of resistance and systemic transformation, forging a world where life thrives and dignity is non-negotiable.
- Our Common Path is to Forge Popular Power: This involves ensuring food sovereignty, the right of peoples to healthy food produced sustainably and respectfully of cultures and the environment. It is about communities deciding on their own food and having access to seeds, water, land, and essential common goods for the reproduction of life. Through agroecological practices, we restore soils and protect our ecosystems, contributing to cooling the planet. Popular power is also our path to fight against racism, discrimination, and to demand agrarian reforms, the rights of Indigenous, peasant, fisher, pastoralist, and gender-diverse communities, while promoting solidarity economies and ensuring universal health and housing for real systemic transformation.
- Solidarity and Justice: We defend those who protect life in our territories, fighting against the commodification of fundamental rights and advocating for social, gender, climate, environmental, economic, fiscal, food, agrarian, territorial, health, migratory, criminal, labor, intercultural, political, and all forms of justice.
- Feminism, Youth, and Diversities: These struggles guarantee gender equity, equitable access to the commons, protect the diversity of gender, race, and ethnicity, and restore the vital connection between humanity and nature. It is crucial to highlight their interconnected roles in our movement for systemic transformation.
- Community Governance and Popular Sovereignty: Communities have shown that an alternative form of governance is possible, one that values community life, the environment, and the dignity of all peoples. This approach requires the development and implementation of public policies that align with grassroots struggles, based on human rights principles, and includes food systems centered on producers and consumers, Indigenous self-governance, democracy, direct participation, universal health and housing, and the financial autonomy of our movements. This system has failed us all, but we have always been—and continue to be—the solution.
Art as a Force for Transformation!
Art has long been a vital force in struggles for justice, access to the commons, and equitable food production—manifesting in collective songs, anniversaries, rituals, and assemblies. Throughout the Nyéléni process, art has been a powerful vehicle for liberation, intertwining our stories and aspirations. We need artistic productions that visualize and amplify these struggles, driving the convergence of our popular movements.
The selected works will be powerful tools for spreading our message and building political formation in the lead-up to the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum in 2025. They will unite efforts to transform the hegemonic system, ensuring life for nature and future generations while shattering the chains of alienation and individualism imposed by mass media and powerful economic interests.
We Call for Action!
Send your artistic proposals with the subject line “Call: Artists for Food Sovereignty – Nyéléni Edition” to communications@foodsovereignty.org, including the following information:
- Title of the work and chosen thematic axis
- Full name of the artist
- Country
- Optional: Organization and social media profiles
Language: We accept works in colonial languages such as Spanish, English, and French, but we also warmly welcome local languages, provided they include translations.
Formats: Video, audio, Word, JPG, or PDF, without watermarks.
Representatives of the Nyéléni process will validate the selection and curation of artistic works for the virtual gallery of the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, which will also be included in a digital catalog with the appropriate credits. The works will be shared with movements and social organizations within our process to support awareness and mobilization. We invite artists to embody solidarity and internationalism in their art, strengthening the struggles of the people.
“Systemic Transformation is NOW or NEVER!”
Nyeleni2025 #FoodSovereigntyNow #GlobalJusticeNow #SystemicTransformationNow #PowerToThePeople #StopCorporateGreed