Art in crisis: Justseeds digital graphics and coalitional praxis of care activism

This article analyses how the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative used digital art as a coalitional praxis of care activism during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a moment marked by uncertainty, Justseeds responded by curating a series of five digital ‘care package’ portfolios, circulated primarily through social media, that offered visual narratives addressing mutual aid, housing justice, abolition, environmental health and essential labour. Drawing from adrienne maree brown’s framework of emergent strategy, Gloria Anzaldúa’s theorization of nepantla and the feminist geographies of care, this study situates these digital interventions as part of a broader project of radical care and collective resistance. Combining multimodal discourse analysis with Chicana feminist epistemology, the article examines how these care packages function as sites of coalitional care across digital and physical terrains. Themes such as interdependence, mutual aid and situated acts of care emerge through graphic representations that humanize marginalized labour, resist punitive carceral systems and reimagine housing as a site of relational justice. By mapping the relational and political aspects of care across these portfolios, the article argues that Justseeds artivism offers a model for how the boundaries of care can be stretched and expanded. Their digital artwork not only archives the crises of our time but also seeds futures of collective care and transformative justice.