Dillon de Give’s digital print, Untitled (Blanket), features the blanket used in his 2016 performance, By My Own Admission, presented as part of The Let Down Reflex at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York. Originally performed in the gallery as a staging of de Give’s nightly bedtime routine with his two-and-a-half year-old son, Peregrin, By My Own Admission—and its 2017 iteration presented at Blackwood Gallery, By Our Own Admission—makes visible the tensions between being a parent and an artist. As the curators describe, “the piece was conceived as a way to combine childcare with artistic duties, highlighting the juggling required to perform the everyday labour of caring for a child (which, as primary caregiver, is a way he tangibly contributes to the economy of his household) and to act as an artist.”

In addition to practicing and performing By My Own Admission, de Give’s son assisted in producing photographs of his blanket in the 2016 iteration of the performance, blurring the lines between artistic practice and ritual, home and work, and private and public. This image was presented as a photo stack in the 2017 The Let Down Reflex exhibition at Blackwood,
In the 2017 performance at Blackwood, By Our Own Admission, de Give invited parents and caretakers to discuss the details of their bedtime routines in front of a live audience, allowing for catharsis, information sharing, and a sense of community. The collaboration between parent and child, and their presence and performance within the institutional boundaries of the university and the art gallery—both of which are often enclosed or made inaccessible to parents and those with caring responsibilities—encourages us to rethink the spaces and infrastructure of care work