10 Treurenberg, 1000 Brussels
Erika Baglyas: A Hundred Sheets, 2023, Courtesy of the artist
Caring is a common experience for all of us, and it shapes our lives from birth until death. It can be interpreted on the personal level (self-care) or projected onto relationships between people (maternal or parental care, elderly care). Still, it can also be extended to caring for nonhumans and, in a broader sense, for the Earth itself.
Caring permeates almost every aspect of our social reality today. It is partly in the wake of the pandemic COVID-19 that both collective and individual care, has been brought into sharper focus than ever before. The pandemic has shed a harsh light on the politics of care and has shown the heavy burden on women, on social workers and the inequality in the gender distribution of caring work. It has also highlighted issues relating to the role of governmental care, the primacy of economic interests and the autonomy of the individual.
Care and the activities associated with it are historically, socially and culturally closely linked to women. For centuries, care has been unquestionably linked to women’s and mothers’ roles. The works selected for the exhibition deal with caring relationships between (female) generations, the role of invisible work, and the status and unequal distribution of caring activities.
Opening event with live performances
- the starting point of Andrea Fajgerné Dudás's performance is THINKING and UNCONCEIVABLE WORK.
The mopping of the exhibition space, the cleaning (maintenance) of the museum is not without precedent in the history of art. The American feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles has cleaned exhibition spaces and museum stairs in her Maintenance performances. As a young student artist (and mother of young children), she formulated her landmark manifesto for the history of art (Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969), and inaugurated the ever-changing tasks of domesticity and care into art.
- interactive performance of Erdei Krisztina - "Visitors as invisible museum guards"
Exhibiting artists
BAGLYAS Erika, ERDEI Krisztina, FAJGERNÉ Dudás Andrea, FÁTYOL Viola, GAJEWSZKY Anna, HERMANN Ildi, KORTMANN-JÁRAY Katalin, MENDRECZKY Karina, OLÁH Mara OMARA, POPRÁDI Flóra
Curator
Popovics Viktória, Dabi-Farkas Rita
Th exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Ludwig Museum Budapest.