FACELESS / 2026

OPEN CALL closed

FACELESS

ABOUT WHAT WE FEEL, EVEN WHEN WE CANNOT SEE

We are used to thinking of the face as the clearest proof of a person’s presence. From a face, we try to read mood, age, character, emotional state. It is the first thing the eye reaches for, and very often it is through the face that we make hasty assumptions about one another.

But a person is far more than their face, far more than their appearance.

Sometimes, what matters most cannot be seen at all. It can only be felt: in silence, in a gesture, in the tone of a voice, in memory, in the energy someone leaves behind. Sometimes the image fades, but the feeling of a person remains. And often, that feeling is the truest thing of all.

FACELESS is an open call about what lies beyond the visible. About an inner presence that cannot always be described through facial features. About a person as a feeling, a trace, a state of being — not only as an image to be recognized.

What FACELESS means to us

For us, FACELESS is not about emptiness, and not about the absence of identity. Quite the opposite: it is an attempt to come closer to a person than appearance alone allows.

It is about the idea that a face does not always tell the truth. It can be a mask, a shield, a habit, a role. But behind all of that there is something more fragile and more honest — a person’s inner life, their vulnerability, memory, emotions, their state of being.

We are interested in asking what remains when we remove our usual reliance on appearance. What do we begin to see when we stop trying to "read" a person through their face? What do we start to notice when we do not only look, but also feel?

FACELESS is about depth rather than surface. About a presence that does not depend on recognizability. About the fact that what is most genuine does not always wish to reveal itself directly.