This exhibition delves into the notions of care and repair, emphasizing their crucial role in today’s world, especially within the framework of decolonial and collective practices. The participating artists focus on the themes of labor, decolonization, and repair by creating new imaginaries. The exhibition reimagines these notions through dialogue, exploring how artistic engagement can contribute to dismantling the unjust structures of neoliberal racial patriarchy.
The exhibition takes its title from a work by Adelita Husni Bey, On Necessary Work (2021), which was developed in collaboration with unionized nurses from the United States and Denmark in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adelita Husni Bey is an Italian-Libyan artist and pedagogue interested in anarcho-collectivism, political theater and legal anthropology. Since 2012, she has organized workshops and produced video installations through non-competitive pedagogical models, within and outside the field of contemporary art. On Necessary Work follows a small group of unionized nurses participating in an online workshop to discuss the social construct of ‘necessary work.’ The group read and studied the language used in protocols that insist on the necessity of work during the pandemic by assigning ‘critical’ status to certain infrastructural and industrial sectors, brutally safeguarding capitalist production in crisis. During the workshop, the nurses were asked to reflect on how their respective healthcare systems and unions responded to the crisis and record their own mobile phone footage following a set of exercises as material that was screened and discussed during the workshops. The resulting footage was shot by the nurses and recorded during the online workshop on Zoom.
CURATORS:
Ana Dević & Ana Kovačić
VN Gallery, Ilica 163-a, Zagreb
Tuesday, 07/05/2024, 8 pm Exhibition opening
6 pm roundtable Towards Decolonial Perspectives
Fokus grupa, Sanja Horvatinčić, Ph.D., Josipa Lulić, Ph.D., Ema Makarun, Lujo Parežanin
moderated by: Petra Šarin
FOTO: Fokus grupa, Sugar of the East, exhibition set up, ENSA, Bourges, 2020-21, photo: François Lauginie