Ecologies of care: Assembling situated artistic practices

Background This article examines contemporary debates linking care and socially situated artistic practices, proposing care as an ethical-political framework which fosters collective support, repair, interdependence, and vulnerability. Drawing on feminist care theory and interdisciplinary perspectives, it argues for integrating care into institutional cultural contexts in order to cultivate collective and relational modes of creation often overlooked by dominant aesthetic paradigms. In the context of global crises, artistic practices are positioned as tools for material, emotional, and communal care that respond to inequality, violence, and the erosion of care ethics. Methods Through the case study of the (Un)Open Archive project, the article investigates how the ethics of care can transform artistic methodologies and contribute to broader social change. Results The interdisciplinary analysis identifies care as a generative principle which sustains collective creation, mitigates institutional precarity, and nurtures new relational and affective modes of production. These practices reveal care as both a material and symbolic framework for reshaping artistic and social relationships. Conclusions Integrating the ethics of care into artistic practice reorients art aesthetically, ethically, and politically in response to systemic crises. By positioning care at the centre of creation and coexistence, art emerges as a site of collective maintenance, repair, and transformation, offering renewed pathways for community engagement and institutional resilience.