Introduction
Many of the organisations and agents involved in the professionalisation of artistic practices focus on care as a set of values which should be central to the processes of these practices, both from the perspective of interpersonal interactions, and from the standpoint of individual relations with institutions. Care becomes an ethical framework, an attempt to improve the mechanisms by which the material relationships of artistic production are structured, considering the performativity of bodies, the dealings and interactions between the agents who participate in these relationships, and their approaches to content creation.
This text addresses the relationship between care and socially situated artistic practices, emphasising those practices linked to the social sphere. In contrast to artistic tradition which has privileged autonomy and individualised expression, we propose foregrounding practices which focus on collective support, repair, interdependence and vulnerability, drawing on feminist care theory (Gilligan, 1982; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017; Tronto, 1993). These practices are understood not as a private or subordinate activity, but as an ethical-political framework fundamental for community life. Considering artistic practices from this perspective means opening the field in order to recognise the need for incorporating care into the institutional cultural context. It also means encouraging forms of collective support and interrelational modes of creation that are often rendered invisible within dominant aesthetic paradigms.
As authors, researchers and creative agents engaged in defining contexts and activating artistic processes, we have participated in the proliferation of artistic residency programmes, and accordingly, we have contributed to the exponential growth of calls. From the perspective of care, this leads us to consider whether we are on the right track, in the sense of opening up spaces of possibility in artistic research and in the development of ideas, or whether, on the other hand, due to budgetary constraints, policy dependencies, and the oversaturation of programming, we are contributing to the activation of precarious processes. Often, we ask ourselves these questions from critical and self-critical perspectives, and that is why in this text we will attempt to exercise transparent reflection, to evaluate how collectivised spaces of care sustain and activate artistic projects.
When art takes a stance on socially and politically pressing issues, in many cases it does so in order to legitimise its role, justify its actions, and contribute transdisciplinary knowledge to causes which fight for the transformation of community life. Socially engaged art, beyond raising awareness, requires a deeper commitment to collective action, which calls for a change in attitude and a much-needed transition in the face of the multiple crises emerging in our social context. These crises arise both from the need for and the absence of care, from growing inequalities, and from related forms of violence. Together, these factors shape what Homer-Dixon et al. (2022) describe as a polycrisis, a condition of interlinked global risks resulting from synchronised and accelerated shocks, including the climate emergency, migration, democratic fragility, and geopolitical instability.
We may consider this polycrisis manifests as a lack of ethics of care, marked by territorial tensions, geostrategic conflicts, forced displacements, deepening inequalities, and difficulties in coexisting within diversity. In this context of multiple and synchronised crises, the lack of a care ethic produces not only social and political consequences but also cultural and aesthetic ones. Judith Butler (2020) points out that inequality and violence are fuelled by racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and contempt for poverty. Artistic projects, therefore, not only render these issues visible but also foster material, emotional, and communal forms of care.
This article is organised in three main sections. The first deals with the notion of care, drawing on transversal and interdisciplinary contributions. From this standpoint, artistic thinking emerges as a field that challenges and interconnects ethics, politics, and activism. The second part focuses on the intersection between the ethics of care and artistic practice. The third draws on reflections distilled from the (Un)Open Archive project, developed within the framework of Care Ecologies (Idensitat, 2024), where multiple voices contribute perspectives, seeking to exemplify what the ethics of care means within artistic practice and in relation to the agents involved.
In this sense, in a context of explicit violence, we suggest two guiding questions: What does it mean to consider art through the ethics of care? and How do we create processes of assemblage through situated artistic practices? These questions open a field of discussion regarding the role of art in times of systemic crises and structural violence, proposing care as an axis of aesthetic, ethical, and political transformation.
1. Controversial meanings of the ethics of care
"Care itself is a political reality, a practice that institutes the possibility of living together in an ordered way." (Vosman, 2020, p.19)
The act of care, or of self-care, has to do with protecting the physical body, preserving it from deterioration, and preventing its degradation, in order to improve well-being and quality of life. It has to do with the individual and the collective, and in both cases, the field of care has progressively moved into institutional spaces. Physical and mental health, in a broader sense which includes contexts and those conditioning factors which affect the ways in which we live or survive, is no longer the sole responsibility of the individual subject, but also affects communities of bodies, and therefore, is a right claimed from the institutional space. Boris Groys (2022) speaks of care in relation to physical and symbolic bodies; symbolic, not because of their immateriality, but because these bodies may be included in the extended mechanism of care which, in the contemporary context, has become the task of institutions. Care and health of the physical body "are integrated into a much larger system of surveillance and care that controls our symbolic bodies" (p.11).
The human body is socialised, bureaucratised, and politicised, and all its most intimate functions become a matter of public interest, and form part of political discussions. "The public, symbolic and mediatised body begins to coincide with the physical, private and intimate body" (Groys, 2022, p. 20). When the practice of care refers, from a socialised perspective to the health of the physical and symbolic body as a whole, and is placed in the hands of multiple public institutions, this is when artistic and cultural practices enter fully into this expanded system of care. This system is currently dealt with and reclaimed by multiple agents and organisations in this collective task of extirpating care from the territory of individualism (body care, self-care, narcissism, etc.) in order to promote this system, within a context of interrelations between multiple subjects, and from a perspective which takes into consideration the common realm. This issue is examined in the second part, in relation to the Open Archive project, in which the role of institutions and the definition of a new institutionalism are considered, incorporating elements that would be relevant from an expanded perspective upon care.
According to Frans Vosman (2020), care ethics is a feminist-rooted, relational, and political approach to ethics that emphasises vulnerability, interdependence, and contextuality. It critiques neoliberalism, systemic injustices, and the commodification of care, advocating for collective responsibility and solidarity. Grounded in real-life practices, care ethics calls for interdisciplinary research, engagement with social movements, and the addressing of unresolved issues such as intersectionality and community formation. It seeks to transform societal attitudes toward care, dependency, and relationality, fostering a more just and caring society. "If afflicted democracy is to survive, autonomous movements are required that can offer resistance to managerial practices, and corresponding inquiry is needed" (p. 20). Vosman poses a question which illustrates the role that the ethics of care should play in supporting individuals, groups and organisations working to tackle complex, structural, and intractable problems (wicked problems).
From the feminist, political, and ecological theoretical perspectives, in the field of care, it is worth highlighting Gilligan's work In a Different Voice (1982), in which she proposes an ethic of care as opposed to an ethic of justice, emphasising the importance of interdependence and relationships in moral development. She highlights how women tend to define themselves through relationships and prioritise care and connection, while men often emphasise separation, autonomy, and individual achievement. The book introduces the concept of two distinct moral voices, the voice of justice, which emphasises fairness and individual rights (more common in men), and the voice of care, which concentrates on relationships and responsibilities (more common in women). Gilligan argues that these voices are complementary rather than hierarchical, and she challenges the developmental models that equate maturity with separation and autonomy, advocating for a broader understanding that includes the relational strengths of women.
The idea of care is approached from the perspective of the ethics of care, connected to the female subject, which emphasises responsibility, relationality, and the ability to respond to suffering. This ethic contrasts with justice-oriented morality, which is often associated with the male subject and based upon rights, rules, and impartiality. Care is conceived as a relational and situated approach to morality, in which attention is directed towards understanding and responding to the needs of others, without losing sight of the importance of maintaining bonds. Three moments stand out. The first refers to caring for the self, in which care is directed towards ensuring survival, and which is often interpreted as a form of selfishness from normative frameworks. The second refers to caring for others, and is characterised by responsibility and self-sacrifice, prioritising the welfare of others over one's own welfare. The third refers to caring for the self and for others, in which the interdependence between the self and others is recognised, enabling a balanced, dialogical, and inclusive relationship of care. From Gilligan’s perspective, the ethics of care challenges traditional hierarchical and normative frameworks, placing empathy, interdependence, compassion, and tolerance (1982, p.11) as constitutive elements of life in common.
Joan C. Tronto (1993) introduces an expanded view of care as a political activity which sustains life, as a ‘species activity’ that encompasses all the practices necessary to maintain, continue, and repair the world in which we live, considering it as a network of interdependent bodies, subjects, and environments. Care is presented as a criterion of ethical sufficiency, a practice fraught with tensions and conflicts, and a universal need, albeit culturally situated. In this sense, it challenges dominant normative frameworks by emphasising the constitutive interdependence of social life and the urgency of addressing real needs, beyond formal abstractions, in a process which is both everyday and political. Among its fundamental dimensions are engagement, in which care implies openness to others and a willingness to act; responsibility for responding to specific needs; transcending the strictly human to extend care to objects and the ecological environment; adaptability to each cultural context; and ongoing process, expressing itself as a sustained and repetitive dynamic, beyond the one-off act. Tronto and Fisher (1987) identify 4 stages of care in this ongoing process: caring about, recognising a need and assessing its importance; taking care of, assuming responsibility and determining how to address needs; care-giving, directly meeting the needs through physical or emotional work; and care-receiving, observing the response of the object of care to ensure that needs are met.
Tronto’s and Fisher's approach is fundamental in connecting care and the arts as social practices, and María Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) takes up and expands upon this by placing care within a broader framework of ecological and more than human reflection. Traditional notions of ‘care,’ linked to individualism, reciprocity, and anthropocentric ethics, are challenged by Puig de la Bellacasa’s conception of care as collective, inclusive, and responsible, in which the interdependence of all human and non-human beings, and also of the material world, encourages more sustainable and ethical praxis within science, technology, art, and everyday life. Bellacasa’s definition of care implies a three-dimensional vision “labour/work, affect/affections, ethics/politics” (2017, p.5). These three dimensions are not necessarily equally distributed in all relational situations, nor do they sit together without tensions and contradictions but depending upon the situation, they can challenge each other, or else hold together. Bellacasa takes on Tronto's definition of care as “everything that is done to maintain, continue, and repair the world so that everyone can live in it in the best possible way” (1993, p.161), although she shifts the emphasis from the human to a plane of connections in worlds which are more than human and not anthropocentric. Her critical perspective brings together post-humanist, feminist, and materialist thinking. “Feminist care ethics understands the world in a state of relationship, where no part is isolated and autonomous, and where small and intimate acts are connected to broader politics” (Millner, 2024, p.105).
In a similar vein, although more focused on interdependence between human beings, Yayo Herrero appeals to our conscience to sustain and care for life in order to rebuild social metabolisms and reorient politics so that the priority is focused upon survival in dignified conditions (2023, p.128); in other words, transforming production models and policies, placing the needs of all people at the centre, and producing only what is truly necessary. She argues that the DNA of our societies is based on organising life around profit and placing “wellness” at the heart of capitalist culture, which makes it difficult to address the necessary transition to overcome the crises of inhabiting our world. To escape this suicidal trajectory, she proposes four main strands. The first consists of the inevitable degrowth in the material sphere of the economy, made necessary by the physical limits of the planet. The second has to do with interdependence, becoming jointly responsible for well-being and social reproduction, in which men and society assume their fair share of the care. The third is the distribution of wealth or combatting the hoarding of wealth and desacralizing property. The final element she proposes is urgency, the need to act urgently on issues related to ecology and resources. This is the course of action that Herrero outlines as a starting point, from an ecofeminist perspective, “in order to continue living and working on this planet” (Herrero, 2023, p. 102).
From an artistic perspective, Iliana Fokianaki (2020) shows how various kinds of care previously implemented within the welfare state have recently been dismantled, including among others, health care, poverty relief, care for the elderly, labour rights, social justice, environmental justice, and collective rights. In her article, the author contrasts the constantly growing multimillion-dollar body care industry with the progressive dismantling of those responsibilities assumed by public institutions. Capitalist society, always more orientated towards the cult of the individual, expands those spaces in which business may freely operate, while those which guarantee socialised care break down, due to the action of the most socially devastating neoliberal policies. On this matter, Fokianaki suggests ways in which artistic practices could establish other self-organised structures which collectively include care, not from a paternalistic perspective understood as caring for the other, but by incorporating the other into collective practices which deal with care from cross-sectoral and more transversal perspectives.
Another key concept linking care with artistic practice is that of radical care, both an idea and a practice rooted in collective survival, solidarity, and resistance. Emerging from radical political traditions, it offers spaces of hope amid precarity, foregrounding mutual support and community resilience in the face of systemic inequality and institutional neglect. As Hobart and Kneese (2020) note, radical care not only responds to immediate crises, such as state-sanctioned violence, economic inequality, and environmental collapse, but also prefigures alternative social relations and futures, embodying transformative potential through collective action.
The genealogy of radical care can be traced through a range of social movements and philosophical traditions. Within anarchist thought, ethical revolutionary practice has long been understood as the creation of alternatives while simultaneously contesting domination (Gordon, 2017). This approach aligns with radical care as a means of prefiguring desired social relations in the present. Similarly, Ernst Bloch’s concept of the concrete utopia provides a framework for understanding radical care as a practice that materialises future possibilities within contemporary struggles (Gordon, 2017).
Significantly, radical care often manifests through subtle and often invisible forms of agency that may not be recognised as overtly political. For instance, asylum seekers and refugees engage in mundane critical attitudes and activities motivated by "radical hope", which challenge conventional notions of political action (Kallio et al., 2020). This highlights the importance of looking beyond visible forms of activism to grasp the full scope of radical care practices.
At the same time, radical care is not without tensions. It may be exploited, co-opted by institutions, or even reinforce existing structural inequalities. Nevertheless, its transformative potential lies in its ability to foster coalitional work, mutual aid, and nonhierarchical collective action, prioritising solidarity over charity and aiming to build sustainable, equitable communities (Hobart & Kneese, 2020, p.9).
Radical care emerges as a multifaceted praxis that combines ethical revolutionary action, prefigurative politics, and subtle forms of agency. It offers a way to navigate and resist precarious conditions while simultaneously creating spaces of hope and imagining other possible ways to live. Recognising and nurturing such practices deepens our understanding of the role of care in radical politics and social transformation.
Definitions and controversies aside, the evolution of the ethics of care into a political issue must engage not only with the concept of oppression but also with the specific configurations of domination that sustain heteropatriarchal and hierarchical systems. While certain theories of care provide structured analytical framework applicable to institutional context, it is also crucial to consider alternative approaches, such as those articulated by ecofeminism (Herrero, 2023) or hydrofeminism (Neimanis, 2016), which challenge dominant Western values and ways of living.
As noted at the beginning, the interaction among situated art practices within social contexts is fundamental for opening new spaces of care, both caring for and caring within the community. Liberating care from structures of oppression and domination allows it to become the foundation of a more equitable politics. Artistic practice can, and must, participate in imagining and sustaining these transformations.
2. Intersection of art and care
“The bar we have set for judging our actions, which should be acts of decency or ordinary humanity, is so high that any behaviour that is not mean, petty, or destructive, becomes an anomaly worthy of praise” (Duval, 2025).
The intersection between art and care became particularly prominent in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns, as numerous art practitioners engaged with care-related themes and were increasingly supported, and subsequently institutionalised, within cultural agendas. As Boris Groys (2022) observes, there has been an increasingly visible transition from the private to the public, and from the personal to the collective, despite the risks resulting from a possible trivialisation of the ethics of care propitiated by this initial concentration of interests, also resulting from the difficulty of drawing connections beyond those derived from the pandemic.
Jackeline Millner (2024) points out that the connection between the ethics of care and art lies in their shared focus on interconnectedness, common vulnerability, and the transformative potential of care. Rooted in feminist philosophy, the ethics of care emphasises relationality, responsibility, and moral imagination in addressing social and ecological crises. Art as a creative practice embodies these principles by cultivating attunement, listening, and imagination, which are essential elements for recognising and responding to such crises. Other key dimensions of the ethics of care include interdependence and alternative ways of living and relating to the world, challenging neoliberal values by foregrounding social responsibility and solidarity. These elements are embodied in the artistic aspiration to imagine new futures, or in the shifting of focus so that these concepts are not stripped of their political and transformative potentials (Egaña & Racco, 2024, p.13). From this perspective, art materialises the ethics of care, generating spaces for reflection, connection, and transformation.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles' projects Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! and Proposal for an Exhibition: ‘CARE’ is notable among the pioneering artistic works regarding care from a feminist perspective. In these works, she tackles issues such as the devaluation of reproductive work, paid and unpaid work, as well as the organisation of work around the theme of the gender binary (Ponzio, 2020).
Maintenance art, as conceptualised by Ukeles (1969), elevates everyday activities—cleaning, cooking, repairing—to the status of art. Her manifesto contrasts ‘development’ (creation, progress) with ‘maintenance’ (preservation, renewal), highlighting the undervaluation of maintenance labour, often feminised and poorly paid. Maintenance art seeks to bring these activities into public consciousness and to redefine them as art.
In her proposed concept exhibition, "CARE," Ukeles outlines three parts, Personal Maintenance consisting in performing her daily maintenance tasks (e.g., cleaning, cooking) in a museum setting as public art; General Maintenance, conducting interviews with people from various occupations about their views on maintenance and its relationship to freedom and dreams; and Earth Maintenance, displaying and rehabilitating containers of refuse (polluted air, water, soil) in order to highlight environmental maintenance. Through this approach, Maintenance Art blurs the boundaries between art and life, advocating for the recognition of maintenance as a vital and creative act.1
Her artistic practice, which began from a more authorial, performative, and solo perspective, in line with artists such as Ana Mendieta and Fina Miralles, gradually shifted towards more critical, collaborative, and community-orientated approaches, resonating with artists such as Group Material (Wallis, 1990), and Tania Bruguera (Bishop, 2025). Her practice has a strong transformative political charge, both from the perspective of the artistic context, and from her desire to transition towards the social sphere, incorporating aspects of solidarity and resistance, which would be defended by the approaches of radical care a few years later. Ukeles' work points in the same critical direction proposed by Fokianaki when she comments that “care labour has historically been gendered, undervalued, and associated with women, both in paid and unpaid forms. This feminisation of care perpetuates inequalities and precarious working conditions, particularly for migrant women” (2020, p. 4).
Referring to these ideas, the concept of interdependence proposed by Shannon Jackson (2011) becomes particularly relevant. Jackson uses it to critique the traditional notions of autonomy in art, politics, and social life. She argues that participatory and socially engaged art reveal the inherent sociality and collaborative nature of human association. Interdependence operates as a generative force of mutual reliance among individuals, social systems, and environments, where the limitations of individual capacities necessitate cooperation and mutual support, strengthening collective structures.
According to Giordano (2016, p. 22), Jackson also links interdependence with disability studies and feminist theory, emphasising that recognition of human limitations and systemic support structures can challenge the illusion of self-management and autonomy. She advocates for an ethic of care and cooperation, in which individuals recognise their mutual dependence, and collaborate to address social inequalities and to build inclusive communities.
Art that acts upon these premises constantly questions how to create meaningful bonds and how to contribute to the sustenance of communities.
2.1 Care, community, assemblage, interdependence
During a round-table discussion in which Idensitat participated at the XI Encuentro de Cultura y Ciudadanía (2025), along with the other participants in the roundtable, we discussed how certain artistic practices responded to the ideas of taking hold of the debate, taking a stand, and generating processes of agencement. The participating projects are examples of situated activities operating within social contexts. In such collaborative settings, agency must be understood as more than the individual capacity to act; it refers to a dynamic configuration of heterogeneous elements—people, objects, institutions, discourses, practices, and affects—that converge momentarily to produce something new.
Discussing processes of agencement — a Deleuzian and Guattarian notion that refers to relational configurations and networks of assemblages (henceforth, we use assembly instead of agency) — entails reflecting on how these processes are interconnected and constituted, and how diverse elements are temporarily linked to generate forms of action, organisation, subjectivity, or resistance. As Jane Bennett (2010) suggests, agency ceases to be an individual capacity and becomes a collective action, a series of agents interacting with each other as an open assemblage, in which each member retains their autonomy, contributes their vital force, and acts as part of a collective, which is never totalising and has a finite life cycle. Within such assemblages, agency and interdependence find common ground, both requiring different contextual elements to be reorganised, creating something that takes on new meaning.
Approaching these processes from the perspective of care-related practices leads us to the relationship between community and culture as fertile ground for assembly. At first glance, the concept of community takes us to a complex territory, where the importance of a group of people who share common elements which give the group a distinctive character is emphasised. Identity, location, ideology, belief, all help to establish a sense of belonging to a collective. They help to express the maintenance of bonds of connection between group members, and to mark members as being different from other groups, creating a union that strengthens and immunises them in relation to an “other”, who can be defined as foreign, migrant, enemy, or simply different.
Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito (2009) proposes reviving the original idea of community, as that which opens up individual subjects to their exterior, liberating them towards their exteriority. It is not the place of identity, belonging, or appropriation, but rather the place of plurality, difference, or otherness. Immunity, on the other hand, according to this author, causes subjects to withdraw into themselves, confining them within their own skin, turning the outside inwards and eliminating it as exteriority. However, María Puig de la Bellacasa (2023) advocates for a more than human community to create a new sense of common material vitality, a new ecological culture of care for the non-human world, as well as more caring human-soil relationships.
It is due to this idea of community, one which is open to the participation and the assemblage of multiple agents, and which comes together as a concatenation of various actions projected over time, that several artistic projects configure their space of agency. The experiences shared at the round table discussion by – A Estación Cultural, Mòdul Red de Cultura Urbana, Balmaceda Arte Joven, and ERIAC (European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture)2 – demonstrate how culture intertwines with the political, the territorial, and the everyday. Each embodies a critical practice that promotes processes of assembly, allowing participants to generate their own narratives, construct alternative worlds, and actively contribute to programmes that strengthen open and inclusive communities.
Two of these initiatives, A Estación Cultural (in an abandoned station in the town of Vedras in Galicia) and Mòdul Red de Cultura Urbana (in an abandoned site in the city of Hospitalet), originated from acts of taking a stand. In these two projects, the occupation of space has unleashed the debate, and with it the creation of collective involvement, and the construction of cultural models in which participating agents influence and try to improve their local context. Conversely, Balmaceda Arte Joven and ERIAC, it was because of young people or various Roma groups taking hold of the debate that it became possible to make a stand for, or to create spaces for difference, diversity, education, demands, opportunities, political action, or networking.
From this perspective, community and immunity create a unitary tension: while communities seek protection through cohesion and self-definition, they also risk isolation by rejecting alterity. Yet within this friction lies the potential for redefinition. Hybrid forms of community—ecological, digital, dissident, interspecies—emerge as activist spaces which resist homogenisation and globalisation, foregrounding collective survival and shared responsibility.
Franco "Bifo" Berardi (2019) argues that one of the effects of globalism has been the annulment of modern universalism, since what circulates freely is capital, while neither the free circulation of people, nor the affirmation of the universal reason of the world, have managed to establish themselves. To counteract this period of "obscurantism", he advocates for solidarity among cognitive workers of the world and the creation of techno-poetic platforms liberated from both economic and ideological dogmas (p.155). At certain times the spaces of cooperation between cognitive workers around the world have made it possible for creativity and knowledge to enrich and improve people's daily lives, based on its use value. Reclaiming this idea of communities of cooperation which emerge from concrete affinities, and which counteract the inertia of competitiveness that has been strongly established in the contemporary neoliberal context, is one of the ways that nourishes the horizon of possibility that this author suggests. However, the idea of building ‘techno-poetic platforms’ is relevant to the creative communities previously described in the aforementioned projects.
This pathway between community, immunity, and cooperation leads us to consider the ethical and political dimensions of care from the perspective of non-violence, as proposed by Butler (2020). According to this author, non-violence involves affirming the value of all life and resisting structures that perpetuate inequalities. To this end, she proposes abandoning individualism and adopting a perspective based on interdependence, recognising that our lives are connected and that equality must arise from these social relationships. In this way, non-violence becomes an ethical and political practice which seeks to transform the conditions that make violence and inequality possible, imagining a future based on social equality and justice: ‘non-violence is meaningless without a commitment to equality’ (p. 33).
Positioned within Idensitat’s long-term research and production projects, such as Un(Open) Archive, this study explores the relationship between community and agency—understood as an assemblage—examining how care operates within and across these interrelations in contexts marked by violence and precarity. The following section expands on this dialogue by addressing how diverse agents in contemporary artistic practice engage with and redefine the ethics of care.
3. (Un)Open Archive: a space in which concepts of care are explored
This third section focuses on the diverse voices involved in the Un(Open) Archive project (Idensitat, 2024). Rooted in an analysis of the present, and envisioning possible futures, the project provides a shared space for reflection aimed at addressing the problems and inertias which not only affect the artistic community and cultural institutions, but which also affect the broader socio-political and cultural environment in which individuals actively participate.
Connecting concepts contributed by multiple voices, the Un(Open)Archive initiates a multifaceted debate upon the idea of care, illustrating its complexity and depth within contemporary society. The contributors’ artistic practices create a pretext for problematising the professional environment, for questioning roles and spaces of relationship and interaction, or for exploring ways of sharing responsibilities and critical analysis, in order to link the making of art to various management mechanisms. Each contributor offers a political perspective, expanding the concept of care by adding new dimensions and meanings.
(Un)Open Archive is not a traditional archive, as it does not encompass a wide range of materials. Instead, it consists of a curated collection of video interviews. These interviews offer insights from individuals engaged in cultural and social practices, who critically examine the growing use of the term 'care'. What follows is a brief description of selected projects included in the (Un)Open Archive which highlight those concepts relevant to the idea of expanding the ecologies of art, and the politics of care, as expounded in this text: Colectivo Larre with the project Te(n) Cuidado; Giuliana Racco, who together with Lucía Egaña promoted the project/book La cultura no es una autopista, los museos podrían ser jardines (Culture is not a motorway, museums could be gardens); and Natalia Carminati, co-author of the project Guia para unas convocatoria cuidadas (Guide for mindful open calls). These projects were produced in the context of Barcelona, although their processes were the result of connections which transcend this territorial framework.
Larre collective introduces the idea of circlusion as a means of repairing the excessive use of the term ‘care’ in the context contemporary art. Circlusión is a concept previously defined by Bini Adamczak (2016), through which she proposes a speculative change in the dynamics of sexual and political power. The author uses this sexual metaphor of penetration, in which circlusion, through the agency of embracing, encircling, or engulfing, reverses the relationship between the active and the passive: “Circlusion and penetration describe roughly the same material process, but from opposite perspectives. Penetration means to insert or stick in. Circlusion means to enclose or put over” (Adamczak, 2016).
For the Larre collective, the act of “circluding”, spurs them to reflect upon other positions and modes of action on the concept of care applied to cultural organisations, agents and collectives, with regard to the transformation of institutions. The act of circluding is proposed as a way of actively addressing processes, needs, and operational dynamics, in which care, rather than cutting across institutions, should embrace or encircle them, thereby proposing a paradigm shift. This approach was put into practice between 2020 and 2022 within the framework of the Te(n) cuidado project (Larre, 2021), in relation to several fields, which include public space, economics, and forms of sustainability through collective and collaborative practices. With the implementation of this project, using various working groups, a toolbox aiming to catalyse other citizen projects was created. Finally, for Larre, the concept of care is a device for problematisation, for focusing upon issues which have not been adequately addressed, in order to place them front and centre. In this way, care becomes a catalyst for processes which attempt to agitate in order to generate change.
Giuliana Racco, in her contribution to the (Un)Open Archive, refers to the book La cultura no es una autopista, los museos podrían ser jardines (Egaña & Racco, 2024) which examines the much-needed transformation of cultural institutions. She points out that the work of institutions must extend far beyond the increasing overproduction of so-called ‘diversity’ (p. 13). In other words, artistic institutions should not limit themselves to being permeable to ‘difference’, but should abandon the colonialist, racist, capitalist, ableist, heterocentric paradigms which still permeate them. It is not a question of addressing these issues as mere themes, thus stripping them of their political and transformative potential.
In this context, Racco discusses the relationship between ‘equality and equity’ as a way of addressing inequality from the perspective of care ethics. Equality and equity are terms which have gained relevance in the struggle for social justice. Equality implies access to the same resources or opportunities, while equity recognises the diversity of circumstances and allocates the resources and opportunities necessary to achieve truly equal outcomes. While equality is built on the idea of comparison, equity approaches a more progressive notion of justice.
Another concept linked to care, from Racco's perspective, is that of integration. In the collective imagination, this term is associated with inclusion, understood as the ability to integrate or assimilate into a given social context. From the migrant experience, the process of adaptation to achieve integration is almost impossible to accomplish, as there is a persistent barrier that cannot be overcome. "There is always a perpetual threat of exclusion or expulsion for those who are applying for or awaiting integration" (p.75). This integration is a vague political concept, which blurs differences, establishing a demarcation which tends to lead to the expulsion of migrants.
The book edited by Egaña and Racco is the result of a collective artistic project carried out in 2022, in which numerous voices from the fields of art and social action participated. In it, they decided to address issues related to ‘care and justice from the perspective of (mainly) migrant women working in the care sector’ (p.15). The interview with Giuliana Racco for (Un)Open Archive was conducted in 2024, drawing upon some of the entries in the glossary which form part of the book.
Finally, the last case study is the project Laboratorio de Ideas para Convocatorias Cuidadas- LICC, organised by Tau Luna Acosta, Paula Bruna, Natalia Carminati, and Rosa Lendínez within the framework of DIES, Devices of Artistic Activation and Digital Spaces (Idensitat, 2021). This project began with a workshop during the time of Covid in 2021 and culminated in the publication of the book of the same title (Carminati et al., 2023), aiming to craft a tool which would help shape open calls which are conscious and mindful of the effort and work that artists must invest in them.
The project was initially created to respond to "the need to activate new structures for production and visibility in the cultural and creative sector; to research and reflect upon the production and formalisation of contemporary artistic practices; and to take into account the paradigm shift brought about by situations arising from isolation, control, and eco-social crisis" (Idensitat, 2021).
Natalia Carminati, in her contribution to (Un)Open Archive, comments that one of the fundamental aspects of care is listening, which subsequently gives way to fruitful dialogue. In the case of mindful open calls, in order to be consistent, this dialogue must take place between institutions and artists, taking into account the positions of both parties. It is necessary to clarify the fears and concerns which must be addressed between them in order to generate a collaborative dialogue when devising open calls for production or research.
One of the concepts she contributes is justice of care, as a necessity in building structures based upon trust. In this sense, the book functions as a tool which helps protect both the rights and the processes or results of artistic practice. The care created by bonds makes everything which has been built more sustainable, and justice helps to consolidate these structures. The result would be the creation of more accessible open calls, which also consider the work of people with disabilities, people of diverse origins, of different age groups, or with diverse functional conditions. The main objective of this tool was to integrate this diversity of perspectives into the open call’s design.
These examples highlight the need to decentralise artistic practices towards ideas of redistribution, equality, diversity, or healing. They declare that artists are a fundamental voice, championing a creative approach for sustainable transformation, focusing upon the collective, criticising a system which prays on those who challenge societal norms and traditional and exclusive structures of thought. They are premised upon imagining possible futures in which mutual care, and care for our environment, are foregrounded; futures in which there is an improvement in subjective relationships, and a recovery of the community as a res publica, as a space of the commons, of emotion and learning. They identify dangers which threaten to lead to difference and/or exclusion.
Un(Open) Archive centres the debate upon care, in a choral experience which defines how a diversity of visions on this concept, whether from institutional structures, independent organisations, or autonomous artistic practices, foreground issues such as involvement, commitment, or mutual support, responding to present concerns by through connection, co-responsibility, and situated and proactive reflection.
Conclusion
We began this text with two intertwined questions: What does it mean to consider art through the ethics of care? How do we create processes of assembly through situated artistic practices? In response, this article has been structured as an exercise in reflection across three sections.
The first section addresses the theoretical foundations of the ethics of care, drawing on feminist and eco-social contributions which conceive it as a political, relational, and transformative practice. The second section delves into the connection between artistic practices and care, emphasising the commons, community, assembly, and the interdependence among various agents involved in situated creative processes. Finally, the third section focuses on the case study of (Un)Open Archive, which introduces new conceptual dimensions of care through collaborative and participatory methodologies. Taken together, these sections attempt to respond to the initial questions, while also generating further inquiries shaped by the reflective nature of artistic production activated between 2021 and 2025.
As Vosman (2020) points out, care is a political reality that enables orderly communal living. Yet, in a contemporary world marked by explicit violence, it is necessary to ask: What space is left for care? Moreover: What place does care occupy within artistic practices committed to social issues?
Throughout this text, we have examined the relationship between care and socially situated artistic practices, emphasising the importance of care as an ethical-political framework for collective support, reparation, eco-social interdependence, and the recognition of vulnerability. Drawing upon feminist care theory and interdisciplinary approaches, we propose integrating care into institutional cultural spaces to foster collective and interrelational modes of creation, which are often neglected by dominant aesthetic frameworks. Understood in this way, artistic practice becomes a tool for advancing material, emotional, and community care, and for addressing issues arising from inequality, violence, and the absence of ethics of care. Moreover, many of these practices confront the limits of temporality: sustaining situated projects requires both institutional and self-managed structures capable of maintaining the relationships generated beyond the duration of the project itself. Only through such sustained commitment can care transcend its temporal boundaries.
The experience with (Un)Open Archive exemplifies how the ethics of care can transform artistic practices and contribute to foster structures oriented towards social change. Socially committed art thus emerges as a catalyst for aesthetic, ethical, and political transformation in times of system-wide crises. Art that organically integrates care contributes to the creation of more just social and ecological structures, emphasising collective action and solidarity in the face of structural inequality and institutional neglect, and crises.
As Groys (2022) notes, the public, symbolic, and mediatised body is beginning to coincide with the physical, private, and intimate body. This loss of privacy, amplified by contemporary social media, provokes a desire for restoration, but also shows that a return to strict privacy would imply the dismantling of the care system, which has been transferred to public and private institutions. Making the symbolic body of the project visible involves considering the desire for visibility – or invisibility – of those who participate in it; a decision that cannot be made unilaterally. Immunity, understood as protection of the physical body, mirrors the immunity of the social and political body: in both cases, protection can become isolation. As Esposito (2009) argues, it is through the risk of contagion that the commons or the communal expands.
In this regard, the projects discussed highlight the need to incorporate others and learn from shared experiences. Fokianaki (2020) advocates for integrating others into collective practices that approach care from more transversal and intersectoral perspectives.
It is therefore essential to reimagine and revise the intergenerational frameworks that shape relationships within cultural institutions, incorporating a wider range of voices into decision-making processes. At the same time, we must redefine notions such as instability, ethics, inclusion, transparency, the value of work, rights and obligations, community and immunity. These perspectives together configure an expanded understanding of care—as a foundational ethical principle that should guide professional, artistic, and institutional relationships grounded in respect, equality, and mutual support.
Ethics and consent
Ethical approval and consent were not required.
Data availability
No data associated with this article.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the use of the artificial intelligence tool Academic GPT-5 to assist in refining certain sections of the manuscript.
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