KIRSTEN BATTEN-LEACH

Artist Statement

I create ephemeral objects which juxtapose the hubris of post-industrial progress and its false sense of permanence in the U.S. against small acts of caretaking. I accompany organic materials like rusted metals and mold colonies through their life cycles to demonstrate caretaking as a vital practice for living with, as opposed to extracted from my surroundings. I document these durational works through drawing, photography and sculpture. I interrogate the difference between exploitation and care in caretaking, a distinction that emerges in the interdependent relationships that care requires. My background as a ballet dancer and domestic worker informs the physical rigor of my practice. Both are forms of labor that are undervalued. As a caretaker, the tasks I perform feel invisible because they are not witnessed except by the person I’m caring for, whose own voice is often undervalued. In ballet, I am forced to conceal evidence of effort and weight. I expose those forms of labor that are camouflaged by my identity as a femme-presenting person and I notice that my fellow caregivers are mostly femme-presenting people of color. Caretaking and gender overlap at the site of my body through no choice of my own and within these communities race and gender are inextricably linked to the conditions of our labor. When I’ve turned to caretaking positions for survival and found enjoyment in it, I wonder whether I’ve internalized the position of servitude or whether the roles of caretaking have become an act of resistance against racialized, feminized labor.

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