The Anderson and VCUarts are pleased to announce Soft Armor, a juried exhibition presented by the Disability Advocacy and Accessibility Caucus. Curated by disabled students, Soft Armor explores the protections we build to survive and move through the world. These forms of armor can take many shapes: mobility aids, coping strategies, routines, humor, rage, adaptation, ritual, rest, and the things we create when the world does not always make room for us.
Open to artists across all VCUarts departments and disciplines, Soft Armor is grounded in disabled experience while inviting artists to consider what protection, vulnerability, care, and survival look like in their own lives and practices. The exhibition makes space for the full spectrum of disability, including visible and invisible, chronic and episodic, physical, cognitive, and neurodivergent experiences. Artists do not need to identify as disabled to participate. We welcome work that engages with the questions at the heart of the exhibition: What do we build to protect ourselves? What do we carry? What helps us keep going?
Rather than framing resilience as spectacle, Soft Armor is interested in the quieter forms of endurance and care that often go unseen. Armor does not have to be rigid or impenetrable. It can be tender, improvised, handmade, sarcastic, temporary, or exhausted.
The exhibition will focus primarily on two-dimensional and wall-hanging work. A limited number of spaces will be reserved for larger installations, sculpture, and craft-based work to minimize floor obstructions and maintain an accessible gallery environment. Through an open application and peer-juried selection process, works by VCUarts students will be selected for the Spring 2027 exhibition at The Anderson. The exhibition will be on view January 22 through February 13, 2027, on the first floor in Gallery A, with an anticipated opening reception on January 22.
Soft Armor is free and open to the public. Students, faculty, staff, community members, and visitors are invited to experience the exhibition and consider the many forms protection can take.
Show us your armor. Whether it is shiny, sarcastic, held together with tape, made of rest, or something we have not thought of yet.
Additional information sessions and installation appointments will be scheduled at the discretion of the lead curator and Anderson staff. Exhibitors are expected to follow all installation guidelines and are responsible for dropping off and picking up their own work. Flexible installation appointments will be available.
Learn more & apply!
Applications Open October 20–November 20
10/20: Submissions open.
11/20: Submissions close at 11:59 pm
12/9: Accepted Artists Notified
1/19: Artwork Delivery
1/19 – 1/21: Exhibition install
1/22: Exhibition opening
2/13: Exhibition concludes
2/14 – 2/15: Deinstall and Work Pick-up
Questions can be directed to Xavier McDaniel at mcdanielxl@vcu.edu or Sarah Irvin at seirvin@vcu.edu.
Image Artwork: Xavier McDaniel
