Research Article
Transparent (Support) Structures: On Visibility and Social Reproduction in Socially Engaged Art
Abstract
Drawing on materialist feminist theory, this article discusses Recleaning the Rietveld Pavilion (2017) by Alina Lupu and its relation to Job Koelewijn’s Cleaning of the Rietveld Pavilion (1992) and other important antecedents. In considering the ways in which maintenance work is articulated in the projects, and the people engaged in the realisation, I contend that it is possible to develop a critical analysis of how visibility is deployed in socially engaged art contexts. The argument focuses on art as a site of gendered labour and the subjectivities as well as forms of (social) work that it produces. Furthermore, the analysis explores the regime of hyper-visibility of contemporary art in contrast to the vast array of unrecorded economic activities, of which maintenance is an essential, yet not exclusive component, that ultimately contributes to reproducing an unsustainable system of work relations based on (self-)exploitation, reputational value and financial dependence.
Keywords
2023 (1)
Socially Engaged Art in a New World Order

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Keywords
- Aesthetics
- Higher Education
- Cultural Diplomacy and Foreign Cultural Policy
- Occupation
- Career and Professional Role
- Audience Development
- Audience Studies and Visitor Studies
- Visitor Motivations
- Business
- Covid Pandemic
- Democracy
- Digitalization
- Diversity
- Third Sector
- Empirical Aesthetics
- Development
- Ethics
- Evaluation
- Field Theory
- Festival
- Film
- Federalism
- Community Arts
- Societal Change
- Ideology
- Staging
- Career
- Communication
- Concert
- Creative Industries
- Creativity
- Crisis
- Culture
- arts organizations, cultural organizations
- Cultural Participation
- Cultural Change
- Fincancing The Arts
- Cultural Promotion Law
- Cultural History
- Cultural Management
- Cultural Economy
- Cultural Organizations
- Art Education
- Cultural Policy
- Cultural Production
- Cultural Sociology
- Art Education
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- Curating
- Leadership
- Literature
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- Management
- Marketing
- Market
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- Methods Development
- Mexico
- Monumentalizing
- Museum
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- Non-Visitor Studies
- Opera
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- Organization
- Political Expression
- Post-truth Politics
- Professional Role
- Audience
- Audience Development
- Law
- Government
- Role
- Socially Engaged Art
- Social Cohesion
- Social Change
- Social Cohesion
- Non-visitor Socio-demographics
- Socioculture
- State
- Symbolic capital
- Dance
- Participatory Justice
- Theatre
- Theatre Governance
- Theory Development
- Tourism
- Transformation
- Survey
- Entrepreneurship
- Urbanism
- Civil Society