Los Angeles is a city of reinvention — shaped by migration, hybridity, imagination, and constant motion. Sustained by people who continue creating despite instability, hardship, and economic pressure, LA’s artistic communities transform scarcity into culture, connection, and possibility.

This exhibition explores what it means to remain an artist in a city that markets itself as “the land of opportunity” while access to creative sustainability remains deeply uneven. The Art of Labour: Abundance, Despite invites artists to reflect on the realities of creative survival in Los Angeles: the labour behind sustaining a practice, the systems that shape opportunity, and the ways artists continue to build identity, belonging, joy, and collective care through creation.

How do artists survive, adapt, and maintain imagination in a city shaped by obstacles and reinvention? This open call centers the endurance, resourcefulness, and spirit that artists bring to Los Angeles. Not only surviving the city, but actively shaping its cultural and emotional landscape.

Artists are invited to submit work that reflects the realities of sustaining a creative life in Los Angeles. This exhibition seeks works exploring survival, labour, joy, reinvention, community, and imagination in the face of economic, social, or personal obstacles.

One of Beloved's values is Create with Abundance: We deeply believe that there is enough for everyone. It is our duty to make space, to co-create, and to imagine abundant possibilities in ourselves and our communities. It is our time to build just futures and to do so from a place of abundance.

We welcome work that considers art as survival, release, healing, or possibility. This open call is especially interested in artists who transform limitation into abundance, and who continue building meaning, connection, and culture despite the pressures of survival.