Core Concerns, Care Embodiments

How might an assistive technological fabric hold and support the body while attending to the extraordinary complexities of embodiment with care? Core Concerns, Care Embodiments is the first public presentation of artistic work created in connection with Co-designing a Smartwear Revolution, an interdisciplinary research project led by the University of Alberta, developing “smart” garments that can respond to the body and provide support when needed. The exhibition features new work by current students and recent graduates from the University of Alberta Department of Art and Design alongside collaborators on the Smartwear Revolution project. From the intimate to the systemic and the relational to the responsive, the artworks in Core Concerns, Care Embodiments tend to the complexities, multiplicities, and potential choreographies of bodies, assistive technologies, and care networks. Together, they take up the poetics of one of the project’s core scientific and technical research concerns: what can (trunk) support do? Core Concerns, Care Embodiments is curated by Smartwear Revolution PhD student researcher and curator Ginger Carlson.

A series of public programs will bring the artists and the exhibition’s concerns into conversation with organizations and initiatives that support and resource disability arts networks. The exhibition coincides with the launch of a Call for Expressions of Interest open to artists, designers, performers, and other creatives interested in presenting and producing artistic projects in dialogue with the Smartwear Revolution. The Smartwear Revolution project is funded by the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF).

Artists: Dylan Brenneis, Calli Giroux, Michelle Kwasnycia, Brooke Leifso and Mona Dehghanzadeh Sahi, Monique Mah, Samantha McLeish, Aynaz Raoufian, Sheryl Spencer, and Al Young.

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