What if our lives were intentionally structured as call and response, rather than isolated, linear paths?

The works in the "carescapes" exhibition connect Emmanuelle Chammah’s practice of social and interactive sculpture to experiences of being cared for and of participating in caretaking. They are informed by William Morris’s belief in craft as a vehicle for social change, Joseph Beuys’s concept of social sculpture, and Om Kulthoum’s call-and-response musical traditions. Together, these influences center patience, care, community, and participation as ways of shaping a world grounded in shared humanity, instead of one organized by stratified systems of power and capital.

Rather than being rooted in these systems, or standing in direct opposition to them, the worksin “carescapes” move alongside and around them, offering evasive, adaptive, and nomadic possibilities. For example, several pieces respond to displacement, civil unrest, and oppression by proposing care as a strategy for forward movement. Through their inherent properties, textiles offer the ability to hold and conceal objects, provide warmth and shelter. Textiles also speak quietly, carrying coded languages like patterns, gestures, and structures that can travel when voices cannot.