PEISAJE ALE ÎNGRIJIRII
LANDSCAPES OF CARE
A RESEARCH PROJECT BY IULIA STATICA
Landscapes of Care is a research project that explores how practices of domesticity and care shaped the urban landscape of postsocialist Bucharest. Through the exhibition, film, and publications the project traces a resilient genealogy of care through everyday spaces.
Landscapes of Care offers a lens onto the postsocialist city, illuminating practices of domesticity and care that have shaped, and been shaped by Bucharest’s evolving urban fabric. Set against the backdrop of a city transformed by waves of demolition, construction, and adaptation, the installation traces a quiet, resilient genealogy of care—material, affective, and intergenerational. At its core lies the domestic space—its quiet intimacies, its more public extensions, and its transformation into what we call landscapes of care.
These landscapes emerge at the intersection of competing forces: the state’s attempt to fragment domestic life and erase traditional practices, the architectural forms of newly imposed living environments, and the everyday agency of women who reimagined courtyards, balconies, and thresholds as sites of continuity, intimacy, and quiet resistance.
Landscapes of Care offers a lens onto the postsocialist city, illuminating practices of domesticity and care that have shaped, and been shaped by Bucharest’s evolving urban fabric. Set against the backdrop of a city transformed by waves of demolition, construction, and adaptation, the installation traces a quiet, resilient genealogy of care—material, affective, and intergenerational. At its core lies the domestic space—its quiet intimacies, its more public extensions, and its transformation into what we call landscapes of care.
These landscapes emerge at the intersection of competing forces: the state’s attempt to fragment domestic life and erase traditional practices, the architectural forms of newly imposed living environments, and the everyday agency of women who reimagined courtyards, balconies, and thresholds as sites of continuity, intimacy, and quiet resistance.
Through a constellation of images—filmic, photographic, ethnographic and archival—the installation traverses the p re-socialist, socialist, and post-socialist eras to examine how spaces of everyday life—courtyards and balconies—became sites of memory and creative reimagining.
Under socialist planning, the drive for a rigorously ordered urban environment paradoxically gave rise to unregulated in-between spaces. Among these were urban courtyards appropriated by residents, particularly women, as vital sites of community and care, drawing upon a historical genealogy of garden spaces woven into the urban fabric of the pre-communist city.
Through a constellation of images—filmic, photographic, ethnographic and archival—the installation traverses the p re-socialist, socialist, and post-socialist eras to examine how spaces of everyday life—courtyards and balconies—became sites of memory and creative reimagining.
Under socialist planning, the drive for a rigorously ordered urban environment paradoxically gave rise to unregulated in-between spaces. Among these were urban courtyards appropriated by residents, particularly women, as vital sites of community and care, drawing upon a historical genealogy of garden spaces woven into the urban fabric of the pre-communist city.
Parallel transformations occurred within domestic interiors. Balconies—initially designed as public-facing—were transformed into intimate, garden-like interiors, perpetuating a generational and gendered care for nature. These appropriations formed “landscapes of care” of profound significance for women’s lives, especially under the communist state’s restrictive reproductive policies. Women, who bore disproportionate burdens as both caretakers and subjects of reproductive control under Decree 770—a law that banned abortion—transformed these domestic and communal spaces into intimate landscapes of care, resistance and the enactment of everyday life. Through practices such as cultivating specific plants, they resisted the state’s restrictions on reproductive autonomy, reclaiming knowledge and agency in ways that reverberated across generations.
URBAN
COURTYARDS/
BALCONIES
Parallel transformations occurred within domestic interiors. Balconies—initially designed as public-facing—were transformed into intimate, garden-like interiors, perpetuating a generational and gendered care for nature. These appropriations formed “landscapes of care” of profound significance for women’s lives, especially under the communist state’s restrictive reproductive policies. Women, who bore disproportionate burdens as both caretakers and subjects of reproductive control under Decree 770—a law that banned abortion—transformed these domestic and communal spaces into intimate landscapes of care, resistance and the enactment of everyday life. Through practices such as cultivating specific plants, they resisted the state’s restrictions on reproductive autonomy, reclaiming knowledge and agency in ways that reverberated across generations.