Ecologies of Care is a group of curators, artists, architects, and researchers convened by Urška Jurman and Elke Krasny in 2021. Taking the meanings of curare – to care and to cure – which form the etymological root of the word "curating", we approach interdependencies in care as ethico-political and corpo-material relations, and pay special attention to new modes of art and cultural practice that enable meaningful social and environmental encounters and that create lasting and transformative relations.
The risk of global catastrophe and ever-growing inequality characterize the conditions of living on a wounded planet. Acknowledging that care is always implicated in the given, defined by the aftermath of patriarchal oppression and colonial violence as well as by present-day compulsory neoliberalism and capital accumulation, ecologies of care work on conflicts related to care and towards the freedom and joy to care. Bringing together practices of maintenance and repair, multispecies ethics, social reproduction theory, public pedagogies, critical heritage studies, feminist infrastructural critique, and hydrofeminist engagements as well as the rights of humans and of nature, ecologies of care aspire to new public imaginaries of care.