Call for papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

REVISTA ÍNDEX ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO #21

THEMATIC DOSSIER: “EXIST: ART AND SPECULATIVE REALISM”

Índex Arte Contemporáneo, the academic journal of the Visual Arts Program at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, is now accepting submissions for issue #21. The journal seeks to disseminate critical and research-based approaches to visual arts, with particular emphasis on thought production generated from Latin America.

This issue will feature a special thematic dossier titled:

Exist: Art and Speculative Realism

Contemporary art has become a fertile space for imagining and exploring realities beyond the human horizon. This dossier seeks to gather articles, essays, and visual portfolios that engage with the tenets of speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, and related philosophical currents that challenge anthropocentric frameworks and the correlation between world and thought.

Inspired by thinkers such as Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Timothy Morton, Reza Negarestani, and Tristan Garcia, the dossier invites us to think of art as a field that interacts with opaque entities, autonomous systems, active materials, and non-human temporalities. We are particularly interested in works and reflections that explore:

  • The hidden, the inaccessible, the unrepresentable
  • The artwork as object rather than sign
  • Interspecies relations or interactions between non-human entities
  • Aesthetics of the mineral, the machinic, the cosmic
  • The image as an autonomous entity, indifferent to the viewer
  • Art, materiality, and speculative thought

In addition to the thematic dossier, we welcome submissions on the following general topics:

  • Methodologies in contemporary artistic practices
  • Art history
  • Arts management
  • Art criticism
  • Curatorial practices
  • Reviews of publications related to visual arts
  • Reviews of artistic works
  • Art collecting and the art market
  • Art and new media
  • Critical thinking in the visual arts
  • Visual studies

Submission deadline:
October 1, 2025

Publication date:
January 5, 2026

Submission Guidelines

  1. Texts must be original and unpublished. Articles under consideration by other journals or derived from previously published theses will not be accepted.
  2. Length: between 4 and 12 pages.
  3. Formatting: Times New Roman, 12 pt, 1.5 line spacing. Footnotes in 10 pt.
  4. Citations and references must follow APA style.
  5. Submissions must include two separate documents:
    • Article: title in Spanish and English, abstract in both languages (150 words), 5–10 keywords, main text, and references.
    • Author information: full name, biography (max. 150 words), institutional affiliation, ORCID code, academic background, and selected works.
  6. Images must be high-resolution (300 dpi), with proper credits and usage rights, submitted separately via WeTransfer or Dropbox.
  7. Submissions must be uploaded exclusively through the journal’s Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform.
  8. Compliance with the journal’s editorial policies is mandatory:
    http://revistaindex.net/index.php/cav/about
  9. Authors are strongly encouraged to review the submission checklist before sending their work.

Failure to comply with the guidelines will result in rejection.