Artists Consider the Concept of Care

LONDON — The concept of care is increasingly present in today’s cultural landscape. This is likely due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cultivated a collective sense of recovery and responsibility to care (for ourselves and others) while navigating an unfamiliar illness and restrictions. Having recently moved my father, who has Alzheimer’s dementia, into an assisted living facility to support his personal needs, while co-directing a platform of collaborations by artists who identify as neurodivergent, intellectually, and learning disabled with varying access needs and modes of communication, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of care. From self-care to social care, the term is neither simple nor singular. 

In considering the term “care” as a provocation in work by contemporary artists, I am drawn to feminist ethicist and psychologist Carol Gilligan’s concept of it. Gilligan describes care as “an ethic grounded in voice and relationships, in the importance of everyone having a voice, being listened to carefully (in their own right and on their own terms) and heard with respect.” Such a compelling proposition is present in artistic practices that critically engage with and accessibly activate this concept of care. In particular, the statement in their own right and on their own terms resonates with these artists, who are charged by their experiences to activate responsibility, access, and inclusion in their creative practices.

Upon entering Leah Clements’s recent solo exhibition, INSOMNIA, at the South Kiosk gallery in South London, visitors are embraced by multiple sensory channels to experience the work. Stepping off of the entrance ramp, the softness of a tactile carpet can be felt through sneakers. Amid a curtained atmosphere, the audience encounters a series of photographs capturing the state of in-betweenness felt while experiencing insomnia. Grainy and ambiguous, the photographs document Clements’s middle-of-the-night surroundings. A voice also comprehensively describes the room and individual photographs. Much of the artist’s work draws on her own experiences to develop a language of illness and disability proposing otherworldy space, such as that explored in INSOMNIA, as an alternative to the sick body. She is steadfast in implementing practical accessibility measures into her practice. In 2019, along with Alice Hattrick and Lizzy Rose, she produced Access Docs for Artists, an online resource that offers guidance to those in the arts with specific needs on how to produce and share with collaborators documents that outline their personal needs (also called “riders”). Clements’s intrinsic and conceptual incorporation of the audio description critically shifts the exhibition into a more inclusive space and experience, an act of care for her audience. 

Recently, Clements and artist, writer, and researcher Jamila Prowse discussed how exchanging voice notes (sending recorded audio messages by mobile phone) is an inclusive method of communication among their peers. Prowse, who has addressed care directly in her multifaceted practice, is currently working with voice notes as an artistic medium. She has proposed that ways in which disabled communities informally use digital technology warrant a pliable space of in-betweeness. Determining a state of care, Clements and Prowse expanded upon this elastic in-between space where virtual conversations of recorded voice notes allow those with varying needs to access and respond to conversations on their own terms. On view through March 12 at Somerset House Studios, Prowse also programmed a series of films as part of Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy, an annual program that considers individual and collective well-being. Leah Clements’s “Collapse” (2019) and Carolyn Lazard’s “Crip Time” (2018) are both included in the series.

In late March, Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy will also debut a new commission, “Edges of Sign Language” by Christine Sun Kim, whose work often formally, critically, and playfully uses American Sign Language. In much of her work she relays an experience of exclusion, both systemic and societal, composed with a cartoon aesthetic. In her recent exhibition, How Do You Hold Your Debt (2022) at JTT in New York, Kim examined the interconnected issues of debt and social inequality. In her work “America’s Debt to Deaf People” (2022), gestural drawings of sign language explicitly provide an index of scenarios to lessen disparities encountered by the Deaf community. Such circumstances in the work include “FINANCIAL LITERACY” and “NO ACCESSIBILITY MANAGERS (ALREADY FULLY INTEGRATED AT COLLEGES AND COMPANIES).” In Kim’s practice, the concept of care takes the form of responsibility to share her experience of segregation from the hearing majority. Through this, she addresses broader notions of being overlooked and excessively fighting for opportunities. 

Carol Gilligan says, “An ethics of care directs our attention to the need of responsiveness in relationships (paying attention, listening, responding) and to the costs of losing connection with oneself or with others.” This consideration speaks broadly to the artist’s capacity to question and challenge restrictive systems and power structures in our society. Artistic practices such as those of Clements, Kim, and Prowse are paradigms of exercising care as responsibility, access, and inclusivity, and of fostering a critical dialogue with others.

Moving Towards Disability Inclusivity, a film installation curated by Jamila Prowse, continues at Somerset House (Strand, London, England) through March 12.

Somerset House will host a workshop series, Grounding Practice, through April 19, and a new commission by Christine Sun Kim, Edges of Sign Language, March 31-May 21. All are part of the program Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy.

Source: Hyperallergic.com