Home Affairs employs a multidisciplinary approach to art making that focuses on issues of identity, communities, and territories. We are particularly interested in art practices that engage resistance and healing relative to ongoing global challenges and with respect to the welfare of all human beings but in particular women and children.
Let Down Reflex Exhibition
EFA Project Space. New York, NY.
Curated by: Amber Berson and Juliana Driever, 2016
(Photography courtesy of EFA Project Space.)
Currently, attempts at defunding crucial organizations and programs supporting women’s sexual and reproductive health care are led by political figures pandering to extreme Christian elements in the United States. Ironically, these very elements also profess to the glories of childrearing. In practice, “to raise”, to “build up”, to “take care”, is not circumscribed to “motherhood” or the heterosexual family as they have it. Yet, alongside the fragmenting of support structures, it is women who continue to bear the brunt of caregiving. Do arts organizations support caregiving?
The work in this exhibition addresses, among other ideas, access and representation of the invisible artist-caregiver. Our installation for The Letdown Reflex, includes ‘Award Letters’ Home Affairs has presented to art institutions who have made significant strides to support artists-caregivers. The photography-print project documents cultural producers who are also caregivers. Their powerful images belie the stereotype of the childless, bohemian, artist.