With tired backs and hearts with room for more takes its starting point from the collectively made newspaper – Vård och Värde (Care and Value). The newspaper, made by cultural and care workers, focuses on the working conditions and experiences of care workers and those that receive care. This exhibition coincides with the launch of the second edition of the newspaper which focuses on questions of the informal care that exists despite the current uncaring structures of elderly care, and perspectives on ageing from intergenerational and intersectional perspectives. The exhibition seeks to extend the discussions in the newspaper through a series of new conversation pieces and artworks. Gathered here in Kalmar we hope they create space for activating collective conversations about the conditions of elderly care work and how we can celebrate our interdependencies in a world that strives to invisibilise them.

Care work is devalued, unpaid, or underpaid. Exploring how home care, in particular, is organised, and the effects of it on both staff and those who receive care, serves to focus on the unjust logic of current society, and what types of bodies, work, behaviour, skills, expressions and homes are valued and promoted at the expense and exclusion of others. The work is carried out by people intersected by class, race, gender and disability who meet others of an older generation who have spent their lives investing in a society many now feel excluded from.  Many artists also work in care work. The newspaper and exhibition build on this connection exploring how art can be a tool of care, creating situations and experiences for gathering, intergenerational feminism and pedagogy.

 

With tired backs and hearts with room for more: on care and value is organised by Ulrika Flink and Jenny Richards – part of Vård och Värde’s editorial group.