Constellations of Care.
Constellations of Care and Sound meditation were two participatory performances presented at the Victoria and Albert Museum, weaving together movement, storytelling, and shared ritual.
Constellations of Care
Constellations of Care (2024) brought together 22 performers in a large-scale participatory performance exploring practices of care, connection, and belonging. Conceived by Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin, the work drew on a collaborative methodology developed since 2021 through long-term engagement with refugees, migrants, and trauma survivors.
The performance combined structured choreography with improvisation, creating a framework in which individual voices and collective actions coexisted. Hymns and vocal improvisations were interwoven with movement, situating the piece within a broader exploration of spirituality, resilience, and communal memory.
Mirrors functioned as central dramaturgical devices, extending the performers’ bodies, obscuring their identities, and implicating both audience and environment within the visual field. This interplay of reflection and presence destabilised fixed notions of self and other, inviting a rethinking of how care circulates within and beyond the performance space.
Staged within an Italian Renaissance-inspired gallery, the piece engaged with the architecture’s symbolic references to Eden, myth, and cycles of life and renewal. By layering these historical and cultural frameworks with lived experiences of displacement and resilience, Constellations of Care articulated the intersections of the sacred and the everyday, the political and the personal.
The work was commissioned by Counterpoints Arts and Victoria and Albert Museum.
link to read the interview with Amanda and Therese
Counterpoints: Our Citizenship Is in Heaven
This work is part of the research project Archive of Gestures, read more here
Image credits: Hydar Dewachi, Shona Goolab, Amanda Camenisch
About the Performers
Since 2021, Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin have been working extensively with refugees, migrants, and trauma survivors, developing a tailored methodology that brings together movement, sound, voice, gesture, and performance. Their workshops use somatic practices as a pathway to memory, healing, and connection.
Over the past four years, this work has grown into a collaborative framework in which participants take on leadership roles and co-direct public performances. Each project is shaped collectively, centring lived experiences and fostering spaces of care, resilience, and creative expression.
In 2024, this approach culminated in the performance Constellations of Care, conceived by Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin, and performed and directed by: Abimbola, Dotty, Elizabeth Addoi, Florence Musa, Freida C. McNeil, Funmilda Olojo, Grace Ade, Grace Owolabi, Jemilat, Kristina, Ladun Mary Oguntoyinbo, Leo, Ms Jumoke, Margaret, Nada Alharbi, Ola Fagbemi, Pham B Long, Priyanka G Geriya, Sharon, Sungyeon Kim, Vanessa Mirza, and Zara.
