Armour of Care is an artistic installation exploring strategies of perceiving and dealing with unpaid care work. Reacting to current reactionist portrayals of care, both online and offline, it takes the process of garment making as a guideline on ways we in which we could interact with care and domesticity as individuals.
The project abstracts visual clues associated with the household, handstitching techniques, the apron and the Butterick Walkaway dress, into new objects. These objects produced suggest acknowledging the social relevance of care work, as well as the demystification of care as a „labour of love“, done only by specific bodies. Furthermore, the experience of social reproduction as something communal, instead of an activity done in isolation by a single person, can extend our definition of care as well.
Through studies of texts by Helen Hester, as well as Silvia Federici along with interviews
conducted with Eva Maria Burger, Anna Majcan and Heidemarie Ambrosch the project emerges with suggestions on how to cope with the harships of unpaid care work.
Photo Credits
Image 1, 2 and 3 : ©Vincent Forstenlechner
Image 4: ©Ronja Kappl