Nurture

Making space for tenderness and vulnerability. Investigating the politics of care, gender and coexistence through the act of breastfeeding.

Nurture is a one-on-one performance in which performer Samuli Laine breastfeeds the viewer. The intimate gesture of care nourishes and allows the participant to feel cared for and supported for a moment.

The work deconstructs the gendering associated with breastfeeding and care. It questions social norms, softens body expectations, and calls viewers to perceive connections of a wider coexistence.

Nurture invites us to examine interactions between all living things: our existence is linked both to the myriad networks of human communities as well as to the biological processes that sustain our bodies and enable life on our planet in general.

Samuli Laine is a scenographer, performer and performance maker, as well as a member of the W A U H A U S collective and the Reality Research Center. Laine’s current interests include utopias, gardening, activism, and zazen.