Careworn By Rachel Dorsey
Presented by ANTiPODE on Jan 2026

Careworn is a body of work dedicated to tight-knit, scrappy, dysfunctional families (biological and chosen).

Like families, words carry histories. Care’s direct linguistic ancestors connote grief, anxiety, lamentation, and sorrow; its Proto-Indo-European root gar means to cry out or call. In Gaeilge, my family’s would-be native tongue, gar- branches into gairm, gaire, gaoil, and gáire (calling, nearness, kinship, and laughter). This exhibition commemorates such acts. Expressed in large, gestural drawings, Careworn aims to explore infancy, injury, illness, aging, and death.

These drawings consist of charcoal, conte crayon, natural dyes, and oil stick on mended, patchworked fabric. Cloth for this project made its way to me from family members' closets, woolen mill scrap heaps and seamstress' floors, the stapled woven handles of firewood bundles, and soiled discards from an arts organization’s housekeeper. We sourced wood and metal similarly, combing through neighborhood "free" boxes, abandoned log piles, construction sites, salvage yards, and rummage shops.

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