ala art prize 2024 notes on taking care

The aim of the Call is to choose an original artistic project with no technical constraints but compatible with ALA Headquarter premises, and in line with the Company’s values and mission.

What does taking care mean today? Of oneself, of the other from oneself, of things, of art? «To Care», «To Cure», listening to needs, allowing time. It is an emotional work, a regenerative action of physical and symbolic bodies. The open call is intended as a moment of reflection to explore the phenomenology of care through visual languages. Without hesitating to investigate the risks related to excessive care. Wherever attention turns into control and love gets lost in exclusiveness, whenever the defence of an alleged body integrity - private and collective - raises boundaries and the individual well-being overcomes a sound principle of community, taking care runs the risk of standing for a misleading metaphor of exclusion. The 2024 edition invites us to imagine 'taking care' as a social, cultural and political experience, stimulating reflection on power dynamics, on the bonds of mutual dependency and on the creation of a community based on sharing and collective care: practices as narratives, in order to reconsider the boundaries between the public dimension and the private sphere, offering new perspectives on care as a form of investigation and documentation on human relationships, vulnerability and attention to other people’s lives. And, thereby, annotations on things to do - or to remember - to take care as a medium for critical analysis, as a multidimensional move, a daily action capable of weaving together the plots of individual lives and the interconnected networks of global society.