Hiliarey Cowan: Inanimate Care

×

Expand

Hilarey Cowan, "Inanimate Care," 2019

INANIMATE CARE is a looped series of videos depicting various acts of care including massaging, bandaging, brushing and dusting, performed on a succession of non-living objects and structures. These mundane, repetitive and everyday actions play out in their new and absurd context, where the receiver receives no tangible benefit for the time and effort invested. Typically, these actions are unseen, un(der)paid and kept relatively private, addressing larger questions of domestic and health care work, value and productivity. How, why, where and for whom do we care? Using a colourful and somewhat humourous approach, each scene aims to tease out these relationships, contemplating the varied roles that care plays in daily life.

HILAREY COWAN  is an artist and researcher, working between installation, video, sculpture and performance. Originally from Treaty 4 Territory, she completed a degree in architecture at Carleton University before living and working for several years overseas. In Berlin she was a founding member of Atelierhaus Australische Botschaft (OST), an artist collective and studio. Having recently studied Sculpture and Media at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Belgium, she is currently reconnecting with the prairies, examining her voice as a settler within Canada's colonial history and reality. Her work explores ideas around care, alienation, networks, geography and touch.