The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation announces In the Power of Your Care, an exhibition about health and health care as a human right, and the interdependencies of care in our culture, from personal relationships to government policy.

Addressing issues such as the politics of institutionalized care in hospitals and military detention centers, the FDA’s ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, and the challenges posed by medical treatments of cancer and HIV, In the Power of Your Care proposes that health care as a human right can be upheld through community-based efforts and policy change. The exhibition will be on view April 19 to August 12 at The 8th Floor, the exhibition and programming space for The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, located at 17 West 17th Street, New York City.

In the Power of Your Care features artists who courageously question how health is defined in our culture, highlighting blind spots in the public policy surrounding care. A common theme connecting many of the works in the exhibition is the unstable definition of physical and mental health, its relationship to beauty, and the illusive nature of being cured.

Several artists in the exhibition—Pepe Espaliú, Hunter Reynolds, Andreas Sterzing and Frank Moore – reflect on the history of the AIDS crisis and the support network that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Others—caraballo-farman, Jo Spence, and Hannah Wilke—express the struggles associated with cancer and battles surrounding the patient’s relationship to the hidden manifestations of physical disease.

Rajkamal Kahlon, Mladen Miljanovic, and Jody Wood examine a range of traumatic experiences—military detention, the after-effects of military service, and homelessness—as a way of acknowledging injustices that produce trauma, their effect on physical and mental health, and pathways to recovery; while Sunaura Taylor and Carmen Papalia explore the visual discourses of disability in socio-political terms.

The show also features non-figurative portraits by Fred Tomaselli, in which the stars of astrological charts are replaced with medication and illicit substances taken by his subjects; Simone Leigh’s Free People’s Medical Clinic (2014), which points to a need for more dignified health care options within underserved communities; Ana Mendieta’s film X-ray (c. 1975), a more clinical approach to picturing health; and several artworks by Jordan Eagles, including slide projections and prints that expand upon the prejudicial politics surrounding the FDA’s ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men, which was only partially lifted in December of 2015.

17 West 17th Street, 8th floor
New York, NY 10011
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 11am–6pm

www.the8thfloor.org