Mohan Shao

It Matters What Happens Next is a free public programme of newly commissioned artworks and live events that consider origins of care and the transition between states of ‘caring’ to being ‘cared for’ by others.

How do we understand welfare, labour, and communities through the lens of care? What does it mean to give as well as receive care? The project brings together individuals, institutions, and the public, interweaving our collective notions of care by looking toward the question: how do we maintain ongoing acts of reciprocal care into the future?

Prior to the final launch, four creative workshops were held at Spring Grove Care Home, which overlooks the garden of Camden Art Centre. A group of residents from the neighbouring home collaborated with artists Youngsook Choi and Eva Freeman to create a dialogue about care, exploring themes such as vulnerability, strength, resilience and institutional care. The residents reflected and shared stories whilst engaging in various forms of artistic practice such as sculpting and watercolour painting. Drawing inspiration from the resulting conversations, physical objects and images collected during the workshops, the two artists presented a live, multimedia performance, the Circle of Care, in the garden, which adjoins the care home.

Besides the performance, the program also hosted a roundtable conversation Talkaoke in the garden led by collective, The People Speak. The pop-up talk show encouraged audiences to explore what everyday acts of care look like today. On the next day, visitors were invited to drop into an afternoon workshop with artist Lucy Steggals to rub their bodies with charcoal, exploring the tactility of textile- based materials, to consider tender moments of care for the body and our intimate relations with objects, places and people.

As a part of 2022 Graduate Projects in partnership with Camden Art Centre, It Matters What Happens Next is curated by students from the Royal College of Art MA Curating Contemporary Art, Pierce Eldridge, Holly Pines, Chuhan Luo, Ruidi Sun, Yuwei Ren, Mohan Shao and Yangjie Zhang.

How can art institutions involve communities in more sincere and effective ways? How can the public explore the critical and transcendental natures inherent in everyday life through participation in artistic acts? How can socially concerned artists create work based on established social realities? My curatorial practice focuses on activating the public's embodied experience and knowledge in institution-led public projects, while encouraging artists to build connections between individual concerns and social or historical contexts in creative ways, to reveal the moving or inspiring labour and emotions hidden in seemingly ordinary everyday things and moments, and in this way fostering the ground for institutions, artists and the public to participate in real social life and receive feedback and sustenance from it.

As a marxist curator and art practitioner, labour and collaboration have always been my concerns. For one thing, through my curatorial and artistic practice, I hope to explore how to challenge the existing stereotypes and distributions about different types of labour, to identify invisible or neglected labour, and to explore more potential forms of creative labour. For another, I also try to reflect on the functions and limits of institution - as a large, fixed model of collaboration - in a wider social context, and to imagine how smaller, more flexible, autonomous and interdisciplinary forms of collaboration can be activated and applied for alternative art production.

At the same time, as a social worker, I am always thinking about how art can better integrate into life and serve the public. Based on the local Chinese context, I hope to promote art out of white cube and into real social space to respond to and develop the public's expectation of ritualistic situations in daily life.

Mohan Shao

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Royal College of Art