Adelita-Husni Bey

Here, caregivers and parents from North London collaborate with Italian artist, pedagogue and filmmaker Adelita Husni Bey (born 1985) to examine the widespread closing and service reduction of care centers across the UK due to financial cuts.

Husni Bey has organized workshops, produced publications, radio broadcasts, archives and exhibition work using non-competitive pedagogical models through the framework of contemporary art. Working with activists, care workers, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, spoken word poets, actors, urbanists, athletes and teachers across different backgrounds, her work focuses on unpacking the complexity of collectivity, to make good what can never be made good: what we owe each other.

Who Cares contains an illustrated story; the text “The Coming Care” by researcher, curator and educator Janna Graham; an interview with Jo White, head teacher at Portman Early Childhood Center; and a discussion by Husni Bey and Alex Thorp, Education Curator at Serpentine Galleries, discussing the effects of government policy on care. Fifty percent of sales from the book will go directly to the Portman Early Childhood Center.

This volume is published for a new site-specific installation that incorporates several films by Italian artist Adelita Husni Bey (born 1985), including the premiere of a major new work. Chiron continues Husni Bey’s explorations of the complexity of collectivity and the human and social consequences of imperialism.

The introductory text to the catalog, “On exercise and outcome,” by New Museum Associate Curator Helga Christoffersen, features a survey of Husni Bey’s work from the past decade. Two new texts and an interview were written specifically for this catalog: “Who determines if something is habitable?” by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, “Referred pain: On the work of Adelita Husni Bey” by Johanna Burton, and “There is water in among the Stones: A Conversation between Adelita Husni Bey and Hannah Black.”