Navigation

Since 2020, US news outlets have regularly reported on increased levels of loneliness, isolation, and anxiety among many populations. The authors of the recent Care Manifesto argued that we live in a world in which “carelessness reigns,” and that we must conceive of care as broadly as possible if we hope to change our own behaviors or our institutions. And yet this crisis of connection and lack of caring did not originate with the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists, curators, and cultural workers have addressed this crisis, directly and indirectly, for decades, exploring ways that artistic projects can facilitate connection or speak to relational care through participatory interactions, immersive installations, or performative gestures. Already in 1992, Suzi Gablik coined the term “connective aesthetics,” anticipating a rise in contemporary art that would invoke interaction, listening, and reciprocity. This panel seeks presentations by artists and art historians featuring artistic projects that address, enact, or facilitate care and connection. Specific topics might include art as a reparative gesture, with human and more-than-human relations; participatory projects in carceral and congregate living settings; intergenerational collaborations; curatorial outreach to marginalized communities; artistic explorations of, or arts-based support groups for, illness, grief, and loss; art that celebrates and builds community; explorations of how a specific artistic medium or method facilitates relationality; artistic invitations to engage with ecological kin; or speculative inquiries that propose connections to, or caring relations in, possible futures.