Index of love and care: The home–studio as milieu for art practice, childcare and insubordination

During the COVID-19 pandemic, my home–studio became a space for both art and childcare. As an artist parent, unable to work independently when my 4-year-old daughter’s kindergarten closed, I initiated a project with Louise. With the aid of a scanner and digital printer, our drawings were produced through a series of interventions and exchanges, in a co-working relationship that involves not only humans but also the studio floor and a domestic digital printer to create our ongoing project ‘Index of love and care’. I delegated my artistic practice to Louise, asking her to complete and improve my drawings. Childcare was being performed, and my practice as well. The research question explored in this project report is: who, or what, was at work during our sessions of drawing and childcare in the home–studio? Rather than thinking of the home–studio as merely a container for furniture, materials, tools and machines, this project report seeks to introduce a new understanding of how the studio, as a spatial arrangement of things, plays a part in the activities it facilitates and does some of the work involved in art and childcare. In the light of this case study and drawing on the work of Karen Barad and Gilbert Simondon, I will consider the studio as a milieu where relationships between drawing, technology and childcare can be explored. In doing so, the nature of artistic labour and its relationship to reproduction will be questioned anew.