Pandemic reflections on the Care and Control exhibition

Refusals, Contracts and Publics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4367209
AutoresMaud Perrier (0000-0001-8531-5092, University of Bristol), Alice Tatton Brown (Independent Artist, UK), Jun Yamashita (0000-0002-0912-6350, University of Bristol, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume25
Fascículo3
Páginas396-416
Data de publicação2024-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14647001231191665
OpenAlexW4386559890
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas19

This article presents reflections on our pre-Covid-19 exhibition Care and Control, and our interdisciplinary collaboration between artist Alice Tatton Brown and social scientists Maud Perrier and Junko Yamashita. The reflections expand current feminist debates about self-care and collective care by centring the importance of public space, refusals and contracts. Care and Control was designed as both an exhibition and a meeting place, created through our ongoing collaboration. It took place in a shopping centre in Bristol (UK) in June 2019. The exhibition was a collage of feminist archival objects and print, contemporary installation and community engagement. Care and Control began broadly as an experiment to seek out alternatives to an individualist approach to self-care, by researching how Women's Liberation Activists practised self-care and collective care beyond the household, and within protest, friendship and public space. In this article, we make a methodological contribution to feminist discussions of collective care by showing how our strategy of a) making a public exhibition and b) writing a Contract of Care is a significant technique for enacting some of the promise of Audre Lorde's 'self-care as warfare'. We show how Care and Control, drawing from the legacy of the Women's Liberation Movement, generated resources for countering definitions of self-care that predominate. Reflecting on how the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated classed, racialised and gendered divisions in reproductive labour, our article suggests that self-care and collective care need to be conceptualised drawing on social reproduction

Art · Exhibition · Media studies · Political science · Public space · Sociology · Visual arts · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy