Cooking, Cleaning, Caring: Care Work as a Global Issue in Contemporary Art.

Since the 1960s women artists around the world have been critically engaged with gender politics and the social consequences of care work. Until today, they develop artistic techniques to question the division of productive and reproductive labor, but also initiate a fundamental debate about the status, value and meaning of (artistic) work as well as the equal distribution of labor. The international conference brings together experts from Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and the U.S. to discuss and re-evaluate this international artistic practice. Leading questions are: How is care work enacted and which layers of the work become visible? How do the positions reflect the issues of globalized care work and the (post-)colonial division of labor? And what does it mean for an art historical practice to include care work as a theoretical framework and critique of artistic production?

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Program:

Wednesday, 10 May, Kunstsammlungen der RUB

2:00 pm – 2:30 pm: Änne Söll, Friederike Sigler, Tonia Andresen, Bochum: Introduction

2:30 pm – 3:15 pm: Siona Wilson, New York: The Love Bomb Method

3:15 pm – 4:00 pm: Eva Kuhn, Lüneburg: Maintenance (Art-)Work and the Production of Presence

4:00 pm: Coffee Break

4:30 pm – 5:15 pm: Ane Lekuona Mariscal, Euskal Herria: Oficio de Pintora. Being a Woman Artist during Franco’s Regime

5:30 pm -- 6.30 pm: Andrea Giunta, Buenos Aires: Cooking, Domesticity, and Power in the Art of Latin America
6:30 pm: Evening Reception

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Thursday, 11 May, Situation Kunst, KUBUS

10:00 am – 10:45 am: Agata Jakubowska, Warszawa: Art Work / Care Work. Self-portraits of Women Artists from Eastern Europe

10:45 am – 11:30 am: Nora Gantert, Nürnberg: Milking the Body – Narrating Motherhood in Contemporary Art from China and the Chinese Speaking Diaspora

11:30 am: Coffee Break

12:00 am – 12:45 am: Änne Söll, Bochum: Leonardo from the Dryer: Lint Art and the Politics of Art- and Housework

12:45 am – 1:30 pm: Vivian K. Sheng, Hong Kong: Caring and Homemaking: Yin Xiuzhen’s Art of Domestic Preservation

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm: Lunch Break

3:00 pm – 3:45 pm: Fabiola Fiocco, Edinburgh: Politics of (In)Visibility: Making Maintenance Visible in Socially Engaged Art

3:45 pm – 4:15 pm: Jacopo Galimberti, Venezia: Art against Housework. The Gruppo Immagine in and around the Wages for Housework Campaign

4:30 pm – 5:30 pm: Guided Tour at Situation Kunst

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Friday, 12 May, Situation Kunst, KUBUS

9:30 am Arrival + Introduction/Welcome

10:00 am – 10:45 am: Viktoria Popovics, Budapest: Cleaning Lady Turned Contemporary Roma Painter. Intersectional View on the Position of Hungarian Women Artists from the 1970s

10:45 am – 11:30 am: Tonia Andresen, Bochum: La Otra Cleans the Kitchen: Waged Care Work in Latin American Art Practices

11:30 am: Coffee Break

12:00 am – 12:45 am: Mónica R. Ravelo García / Álvaro Á. Cárdenas Castro, Valparaíso: Care in the Works of Latin American Female Artists: An Approach from the Perspective of the Communities

12:45 pm – 1:30 pm: Ursula Ströbele, München: Artistic Strategies of Ecological Care Work

Hybrid: on-site + online (Zoom)
Please register for the conference until the 7th of May via care-work-conferencerub.de . The zoom link will be sent after registration.

Locations:
10 May – Kunstsammlungen der RUB, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum
Transportaton from central station: Underground U35 ‘Bochum Hustadt (TQ)’ to station ‘Ruhr-Universität, Bochum’ plus walk by feet approx. 12 minutes.
Entrance: opposite the Audimax

11 + 12 May – Situation Kunst – KUBUS, Nevelstraße 29c, 44795 Bochum
Transportation from central station: Tram 308 ‘Hattingen Mitte’ or 318 ‘Bochum Dahlhausen‘ to station ‘Schlosspark/Museum unter Tage’ plus walk by feet approx. 8 minutes.
Entrance: via the wooden bridge opposite the ruin of the chapel

The conference is organized by Prof. Dr. Änne Söll, Dr. Friederike Sigler, and Tonia Andresen, M. A., Institute of Art History, Ruhr University Bochum, as part of the DFG project Cleaning, Cooking, Caring. Care Work in Art in Western and Eastern Europe, the US and Latin America since 1960. With kind support of the DFG German Research Foundation.