The Work of Quiet Hands considers the importance of prioritising care. While certain individuals like Beggs may place an emphasis on care, in general it is not highly valued. In contemporary society, women, immigrants, people of colour and other oppressed groups do most of the work supporting households, families, and communities. Examples of such work include birthing and raising children, caring for friends and family, doing housework, working with one’s community, and maintaining loving relationships. This vital work is known as care labour and continues to be unrecognised and uncompensated.
This body of art, works to challenge our current societal structures and perception of care labour. The work utilises specific artistic methods which prioritise slow ways of making such as hand stitching, dying, creating inks, collecting natural materials, and sourcing recycled fibres. These methods are associated with feminine forms of craft. Consequently, they challenge dominant fine art hierarchies which have historically devalued the work women do. Additionally through working in laborious ways the art works to sit in opposition to dominant patriarchal capitalist structures that prioritise productivity and devalue anything ‘feminine’.
Beggs works to use this body of art to change the way we perceive care as invisible and instead work to position it as a vital act that connects communities. While they recognise that their art cannot change our current societal structures, surrounding domestic work they hope to bring awareness to the issues surrounding invisible labour and prompt viewers to place greater value on domestic and care work in the future.
Bel Beggs is an emerging artist from Lutruwita, now working in Naarm/Melbourne. Care sits at the centre of her practice. She views her practice is a physical act of care and simultaneously uses care as a lens to critique the world around her. She considers care to be an act of consideration where one provides support for somebody or something. Care is what we do to maintain, contain and repair our world so people can live in it as well as possible. Bel has a textile based practice and works with second hand fabrics which she dyes with organic materials gathered from her surrounding. These fabric hold histories and she works to honour this as she gives them a new life. By working in this way she minimises the harm her work has on the earth making her art an act of care for the environment and her materials.