Worlding Love, Gender, and Care

Sexual Healing (1998), a pioneering video by Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015), provides shock therapy rather than a teasing cure. It presents an ambivalently framed view of her disabled husband Nam June Paik (1932-2006) in physical therapy. Fluxus humour and the groundbreaking video work of both artists notwithstanding, the video puts pressure on the epistemological boundaries of Art History. It pointedly engages the nexus between love, sex, and care in old age with a feminist worlding, thus opening our eyes to questions of affect, authorial power, and gender in artistic collaboration.