In an ageing society, the increasingly common practice of ‘mantelzorg’, or informal caregiving, offers a complex example of love, moving between devotion and obligation. The labour of cooking, washing, improvising, consoling etc. often remains invisible. Becoming an informal caregiver is often not an active choice but can emerge gradually. One's positioning or role in a relationship is not necessarily fixed but part of an ongoing interaction that can shift and sometimes be reversed. Not only the need for care, but also the act of providing it can arise from exhaustion or dependency. This work examines how affection and capacity can turn into vulnerability.
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This work is made in collaboration with Ilona Smit, Sangjun Lee and Menno de Vries