Take Care

Ten artists exhibiting for the first time in France question how activism, mutual aid, feminism, indigenous knowledge, queer desire, creative survival, and a closer relationship to the land can contribute to a better recognition of care as a powerful social and cultural force.

Because care is a political and artistic issue, the Art Centre is presenting a reflexive and practice-based collective exhibition on care. The artists in this exhibition offer new perspectives on the precariousness of artistic labour, gendered and racialized carework, economic crises, mass incarceration, mobility and migration, queer and non-conforming bodies, death and dying, and environmental stewardship.

Introduced in the academic and medical worlds in France, this notion is beginning to resonate across many other fields. In a French and global context of "care crisis," it is important to revalue and politicize care by exploring the new forms and relationships it can engender. As part of the Letters and Handshakes duo, Christine Shaw developed a year-long program at the Blackwood Gallery with residencies, workshops, exhibitions, and publications involving over 150 artists, researchers, activists, curators, and care workers confronting the crisis of care. Take Care at la Ferme du Buisson is a newly configured group exhibition based on this transversal project. In inviting a Canadian curator to present this exhibition, we are interested in mobilizing the questions activated by artists working elsewhere in the world, and examining how they could introduce new tools for exploring care in the French context.

The shared political proposition of these artist projects pivots on care as a possible nodal point among a multitude of actions, struggles, and visions. Extended by a series of performances, talks, and workshops, Take Care asks if an expansive conception of care can open common discursive ground toward linking multiple struggles locally and globally.