Acts of Care: Nurturing the Present, Shaping the Future

The Ways We Care

Cultivating, tending, tracking, nurturing, repairing, and maintaining. All are words and actions that conjure the love and attention – and the worries and struggles – that go into care, whether for ourselves, others, our families, and our communities. 

Building from a rich feminist art history centered around a politics of care (e.g. Wages for Housework, Maintenance Art, and Mother Art, c. 1970s), this exhibition defines care expansively while taking it as the base of our collective life. From child rearing to mobilizing a grassroots social movement, to care for someone or something is to imagine and invest in the present for the sake of a better future, however big or banal.

This exhibition also recognizes the gendered, ableist, classed, and racialized terms of care, and the often-invisible nature of care work as work. As such, this exhibition gives space to see and explore different experiences and interpretations of care, including but not limited to reproductive labor, affective labor, domestic work, care work, and/or any facet of social, political, cultural, and ecological caretaking.

About the Juror: Kristen Carter is an assistant professor of art history at Florida Southern College. She holds a PhD in modern and contemporary art from the University of British Columbia and a BA in art history from DePaul University. Her research concerns different modes of relationality, care, and institutional critique with an emphasis on artistic praxis and pedagogy in the 1960s and 1970s. She has presented and published on a range of topics, including performance, body art, and dance, histories of art and pedagogy in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, and the changing relationship between art and politics. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the University of British Columbia and the Getty Research Institute. 

Committed to collaborative and inclusive pedagogy, Carter serves on the College Art Association’s Education Committee, advocating for undergraduate research and innovative teaching.

Calendar:

• Exhibition Dates: July 12 – August 16, 2025 
• Opening Reception: Saturday, July 12 from 4 to 7 PM CST 
• Artist Walkthrough: Saturday, August 16 from 2 to 4 PM CST 
• First Entry Due Date: May 14, 2025, 11:59 PM CST 
• Extended Due Date : May 21, 2025, 11:59 PM CST 
• Notification: May 30, 2025