Performance of Care
2021
Performance of Care is a performative work by artist Jenn Sova who used Instagram Live to film her interactions with her installation, traced your scent through the gloom, as a part of the two-person exhibition, Fruits of my Labor at B10 Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The installation is a 6’ by 3’ dirt mound containing 34 (the age of the artist) live violets, installed in a basement gallery space for 6 weeks. traced your scent through the gloom is a desperate attempt to discover how much or how little care is needed to survive; no light, no circulating air, no water, no bodies, the violets sit alone in the dark until someone enters the room. Every Saturday Sova came to perform care for them by turning on the grow light above, setting up a phone to "go live", and then giving the plants care in the form of watering, singing, grooming, talking, etc. This documentation is a culmination of the Instagram Live feed edited with details of care given. This work invites viewers to be voyeurs left to wrestle with questions of performative parenting, the labor of love, and the role of technology in caretaking.