talkCecilia GuidaParticipation and care in performances in public spaces

Participatory performance outside museums and as a tool for social repair and healing.

In the 1990s and 2000s, artists such as Suzanne Lacy, Jeremy Deller, Santiago Sierra, Oda Projesi, Christoph Schlingensief, to name a few, involved ordinary people presenting themselves as ‘repairers’ of the social bond, in relation to an audience specifically defined by a place such as women, the working class or those with immigrant status. In the last decade, there has been a shift in social practices from participation to care, understood as caring, standing by, collectively ‘recovering’ an injury – related to race, environment, disability – for a communal healing in Simone Leigh’s participatory projects, Cooking Sections’ performative communal meals, and Jérôme Bel’s performances.