Infrastructures of Care (2021)
Photographic and sculptural installation
scaffolding, scaffold lights, block-mounted photographs, ductwork, chains, padlocks
Infrastructures of Care (2021) was part of fuse, a project created and curated by Elyse Tonna, and produced by Valletta Cultural Agency.
This site-specific installation developed during a research phase that shifted attention toward a long-present but often overlooked nonhuman community: the street cats of St. Charles Street, adjacent to the Valletta Design Cluster (formerly the Old Abattoir). As human activity in the area slowed, this feline community became more visible.
Observing how these cats navigated and inhabited the surrounding architecture inspired a response rooted in care and coexistence. The installation reappropriates human structures, namely scaffolding, and building materials, along with objects tied to the area’s history, such as the turtiera, a traditional metal tray once used in old ovens. Photographs of the cats are integrated into the structure, which doubles as a playful yet functional space for feline movement, rest, and visibility.
The work invites reflection on how we share space with other species and suggests an architecture of compromise, care, and coexistence. In this reimagined infrastructure, the boundary between human and nonhuman softens, and the installation becomes a small but living gesture of interspecies symbiosis.
The structure indirectly welcomed the cats, offering them a new way to move through and inhabit the space. In that sense, the scaffolding wasn’t just a sculptural gesture, it became something performed, even activated, by the feline community itself. Their presence gave the installation life, transforming it into a quietly collaborative piece between human intention and nonhuman agency.
Infrastructures of Care (2021) A photographic installation by Laura Besançon for FUSE, a project created and curated by Elyse Tonna, produced by Valletta Cultural Agency as part of the Agency’s Cultural Programme, Valletta Design Cluster, Malta (30th April - July 2021)
Video Interview can be viewed here view