Making Meaning: Art as acts of care

In all of our lives we will dip into and out of caring and being cared for, regardless of our social status, simply because it is part of the human life course. The experience of caring for friends and family is one that is integral to the human condition and perhaps Covid-19 has helped us to notice this even more. Covid-19 has shone the light on the unseen work of family and friend carers particularly where professional support workers have been restricted in the work they would normally do (also a marginalised and poorly valued community). However, the work of carers is often undervalued and unseen in our communities even though one in ten of us are carers. Our public discussions often focus on regulatory protocols linked to care that don’t reach into the subtle and intimate spaces of caring. Caring is much more than ensuring essential needs are met – there’s an ecosystem of unseen dynamics that play a critical role in how we create shared dignity.

Meaning Making – Art as Acts of Care is a different kind of conversation that invites us to engage with the empathetic and embodied conditions that shape the emotional landscape of our lives. These are the invisible qualities that can make all the difference. It's a special kind of attunement that involves touch, eye contact, tone of voice and attendance to tiny personalised details such grooming, food seasoning or scent.

The performance work taps into the unspoken and deep interpersonal connections embedded in care. The performance also invites participation while drawing attention to the intangible value of time – time to notice, time to be present – time to connect.  This kind of care isn’t the kind that fits an audit but it is one that we need to honour as part of our community wellbeing.

The project is a phased conversation that involves an online exhibition of video and photographic artworks created by Danica Knezevic who is a multimedia performance artist and carer. Following the online exhibition Tania Teague, Carer-in Residence at the UTS Centre for Carers Research, will engage in a recorded conversation with Danica reflecting on their shared experiences and the carer’s journey. The final phase of this project involves a live performance at UTS by Danica in celebration of National Carers Week.

At each stage of the project artworks will be shared across social media and seek interactive contributions which will feed into creating a map where shared meanings can be explored.

This project is supported by the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion and a key thread in this work involves seeking to create collective impact starting with its home, the UTS community. Being a carer can be a lonely and isolating journey where friends, work and social life fall away. The project aims to reach out to carers across UTS with a special focus on student carers who are an under-represented group. In raising their visibility the project aims to encourage personal and social responsibility towards carers and broaden conversations about carers. Covid-19 has disrupted much of our lives and one thing that rings through is the significance of care  - how we can recognise its value and improve the web of supporting conditions.  

The understanding of care: caregiving and receiving is fundamental in the way in which we function as individuals, families and as communities. Physically, the action of caregiving is both endurance and enduring. Within the relationship to performance art, caregiving is enduring through the body, duration and engages with the audience in experience through action. Within the traditional context of family, the connections established in infancy are then mirrored in adulthood through the mother (as) or primary caregiver. In this instance the female role often becomes the primary model of caregiving.

Within this fundamental relationship, the self acts for the other in an exchange that determines the understanding of self and its position in the world.

Caregiving and receiving are largely invisible interactions that are transferable to performative practice. The Self and Other are positioned in this project as being inextricably linked in the act of caregiving. This is particularly resonant in a family dyad, where physical and emotional caregiving is required for a family member, here considered as the other. This practice-based research establishes performative works that evoke the reciprocal nature of caregiving and receiving and the exchange of Self and Other through the caregiving process.

My art practice is based on the relationship of Self and Other through caregiving as the performer has an ethical responsibility to the audience or participants. This profound intimate action of caregiving: a performative act that is based on the relationship of artist and audience (Self and Other). The relationship of Self and Other is an ongoing negotiation that is identified through the carer as Self and the care-receiver as Other. In performance practice this is mutually recognised as the performer as Self and the audience as Other. However, these identifiers of Self and Other are exchanged in the caregiving process, as there are two selves that have their own identity, their own needs and wants.

The intimate and focused relationship of caring can cause what I refer to as a Dissonance of Self, in which a reciprocal outcome affects both caregiver and receiver due to the duality of caregiving.