Kate Just, Self Care Action Series, 2022-2023
Linden New Art (2023)
Beechworth Contemporary Art Award (2022)
Self Care Action Series consists of a series of forty brightly coloured, hand-knitted panels bearing texts relating to self-care actions. The series arose from my lived experience as a queer feminist, artist teacher, advocate, activist, and parent who has dedicated significant time to generating social and politic change through art. I began to consider the importance for artists and activists to find ways to sustain and care for oneself in difficult times, and formulated a list of texts/actions reflecting my own tools for self-care.
Self-care has its roots in radical activism. As a term, it dates back to the US based civil rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Activist organizations upset by the ways America’s healthcare system was failing marginalized communities set out to give those communities free or low-cost resources to better take care of themselves. In the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party created the first Peoples’ Free Medical Clinic as an alternative to hospitals and private care practices. The women’s rights movement of the 1970s also provided underserved communities feminist health centers. Activists preached self-care within communities and practiced it themselves. Writer, feminist, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde famously stated “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
The knitted Self Care Action Series panels are all the same size. They are brightly coloured and deploy the same rounded font. These simple design elements underscore the optimism of the project and the clarity of the actions. Actions from the series include: Ask for help, Stay Present, Switch Off Your Phone, Love Yourself, Make Art, Get Into Nature, Feel Your Feelings, Get Therapy, and Say No. Over the year I have made the works, I have shared them on Instagram through posts about each work, and pictures of me holding each sign up.
Each work is a simple prompt that I consider crucial for my own emotional survival and resilience and an invitation to others to imagine how they might prioritise caring for themselves. These are simple actions that are sometimes hard to do.
Though I initially made the signs to consider how artists and activists can build emotional resilience to be able to continue doing the work we do, personal circumstances in my own life have continued to shape and inform the work. In the two years leading up to the project I had foster-adopted a second child (a teenager), struggled through two years of pandemic life, and had entered menopause. And then, just as I started the series, my dearly loved father died. It seemed I was making the work at a time where I needed, more than ever, to revisit and sustain tools of self care.
Beyond offering the means for taking care of myself as an artist and activist, the series has guided me and others around me with simple reminders how it is possible to survive grief, global upheaval, family stress, and life changes. As I share these works, I have noted that reminders to love and care for yourself are often welcome.
Read the essay by Sophia Cai in the exhibition catalogue for Self Care Action Series at Linden New Art.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.