Essential Services is a Vienna-based atelier founded in 2020 by visual artists and cultural workers Enar de Dios Rodríguez and Andrea Steves dedicated to essential problems, and problems of essentiality, in art and beyond.
Let It Return! (working title) is a publication and exhibition edited by Essential Services (Andrea Steves & Enar De Dios Rodriguez) that deals with the pillage, plunder, and public exhibition of cultural artifacts by various institutions throughout history. The project includes texts and artistic interventions which explore various possibilities, speculations, and frictions of repatriations in the present and future, gesturing towards reparations, reclamation, and justice. The publication was the winner of the 2021 Emerging Concepts publication award from PrivatePrint and will be released in 2023.
