Intimacies of Care Exhibition Visit
On a recent trip to London, I visited one of my favourite museums, The Wellcome Collection and I was fortunate to see the Intimacies of Care: Spaces of Grief and Possibilities exhibition by artist Rudy Loewe.
The exhibition explores histories of resistance and African and Caribbean spiritual practices. For this new commission they are working in large-scale multi-media sculpture for the first time. Creating spaces for participation, rest and reflection, they invite us to collectively reimagine what care could be.
Loewe’s work responds to statistics showing that Black people in the UK face systemic barriers to accessing mental health support when seeking it voluntarily yet are four times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act.
This exhibition was impactful for me on many levels. My wonderful mother built a long career in the mental health sector and from a very young age, my siblings and I were exposed to the fragility and power of mental health, particularly in African and Caribbean communities.
Once a month on a Sunday, my mum would host a lunch club for service users where they could have hearty Caribbean food, play games and listen to music. The Sunday Lunch Clubs created a space of safety and community. It was the “space to care”, to have “spiritually integrated care” and “a space to rest and recalibrate without pressure”, that Rudy highlights as some of the things needed in our mental health care plans.
On a personal note, the lunch clubs helped to destigmatise mental health for me. Seeing the potential fragility of mental health in others and myself, it wasn’t a thing to be feared, it was an opportunity to be nourished, to be held, to embrace holistic care.
At one point during the exhibition, three white men were talking jarringly loud. They were standing by the multi-coloured display that highlights, on one side, the current state of mental health care and, on the other, the tools and resources that are needed but lacking. The three men looked at the display perplexed and were saying they didn’t understand what it was for and why was it needed. And I thought to myself, “yep, art in action”.
Thank you Rudy. Thank you mum.
