Tracking the turbulent concept of ‘care’ in a pandemic-ravaged world
48hills
Independent San Fransico news + culture
By Caitlin Donohue
CCA’s ‘Contact Traces’ offers entry points for urgent discussion, on topics from environmental racism to commercial wellness shams.
“Do you have any answers for me?” asks LaToya Ruby Frazier’s mother in “Detox (Braddock U.P.M.C.),” the 2011 video piece the artist contributed to “Contact Traces” (through June 6), a show by California College of the Arts curatorial practice graduate students.
She’s far from the only one with the question. We’re coming up on the milestone of 60 percent of San Franciscans over 16 being fully COVID-vaccinated. But pressing issues lie strewn about us, half-discarded in the sprint to brunch again.
Questions like: What about the rest of the world? President Biden has indicated his support for waiving COVID patent restrictions, but the US sits on a large stockpile of the shots that could be sent to our neighboring countries—or better yet India, where the coronavirus death rates are as high as we’ve seen anywhere, at any time. You can’t beat a global pandemic with one-country solutions. Haven’t we learned anything from the last year and change?
Even if you find a way to look past global inequity and the possible development of new virus strains, it remains to be seen how workers from many industries will bounce back after their devastation by the pandemic. And what of the isolation-caused skyrocketing rates of local overdose deaths?
And on, and on. It’s a dizzying array of concerns whose overwhelming variety appears to be echoed in “Contact Traces,” which revolves around the concept of “care” as a potential avenue out of this mess.
Her largely Black community has fallen into disrepair after the closure of the steel mill that once employed workers, and “Detox” examines the public health fall-out from the community’s airborne exposure to the mill’s heavy metals.
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Courtesy of: 48hills.org
