RUNZE FENG​

The Color of Care, employing participatory mural painting as its medium, transforms the abstract ethics of care into an embodied collective practice. Amidst pandemic-induced social isolation, the project granted barrier-free color selection rights to all community members—inviting each resident to choose a hue symbolizing personal care, thereby reconstructing the public space's semantic field through authentic individual experiences. Despite immense pressures under strict social distancing, this wall became a nexus of social relationships and a testament to collective courage: emerging not only from residents' spontaneous enthusiasm but also embodying unprecedented administrative openness (the first-ever authorization of fully autonomous public mural creation) and space-sharing by local businesses. Ultimately, non-professionals' collaborative actions achieved public art's true purpose. Every pigment stroke on this communal canvas functions simultaneously as personal catharsis and ethical acknowledgment of others' existence; their layering and blending coalesce into a fluid cartography of community care—vividly embodying Hannah Arendt's insight that "publicity constitutes a common world," one forged not through predetermined consensus but through heterogeneous interactions. This process itself profoundly demonstrates public art's capacity to activate community potential, dissolve barriers, cultivate cooperation, and ultimately democratize shared spaces. Such participatory creation constitutes care's most genuine enactment: revealing that caring demands not paternalistic problem-solving for others but humble participation with others as equals.