Reverberation! A New Wave in Disability Art

Authors

  • Maggie Bridger Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Sydney Erlikh Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Sandie Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v10i2.784

Abstract

Graduate student scholar/artists Sydney Erlikh, Maggie Bridger, and Sandie Yi reflect on their experiences of having attended VIBE: Challenging Ableism and Audism Through the Arts. The three were struck by the diversity and range of unique experiences reflected in the work of the presenting artists. Each author takes the lead on one of three themes they collectively identified: what constitutes disability art, how community shapes artistic and scholarly practice, and how boundaries of the field are evolving. The article explores the ways in which disabled artists are defining creative processes and aesthetic approaches outside of the mainstream art world and its ableist productivity demands. They also take note of how artists with non- apparent disabilities are actively moving the field in new directions. Finally, they examine the ethical dimensions of artistic “ownership” in the collaboration between artists with and without disabilities, particularly around those with intellectual disabilities and their allies. The authors ultimately offer a description of a new wave of disability art that is pushing the field to think through questions of process, collaboration, ethics, visibility, creative scholarship, and relationship to disability studies. This new work, they argue, is creating space for a more sustainable, community-based practice.

Author Biographies

Maggie Bridger, Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago

Maggie Bridger (MS) is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Disability and Human Development and a disabled dance artist. Her research and artistic interests center around disabled bodyminds in dance, with a focus on reimagining pain through the creative process. Maggie is a co-founder of the Inclusive Dance Workshop Series at Access Living, for which she and her project partner received a 2021 Chicago Area Albert Schweitzer Fellowship. She was part of the inaugural cohort of the Dancing Disability Lab at UCLA, serves on the committee to organize Chicago's integrated dance concert, CounterBalance, and was recently named one of Synapse Arts' 2021 New Works artists.

Sydney Erlikh, Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago

Sydney Erlikh (MSEd) doctoral candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is studying dance and disability to create a multi-sited ethnography on dancers classified as having intellectual disabilities. She was co-awarded a 2019-2020 Chicago Area Schweitzer Fellowship which led to the creation of the Inclusive Dance Workshop Series at Access Living in Chicago. She was selected for the SeeChicagoDance Critical Writing Fellow and the Harvard Mellon School of Theater and Performance Studies Research. Sydney currently serves on the CounterBalance planning committee and the NDEO dance and disability task force.

Sandie, Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

Sandie Yi is an assistant professor in the department of art therapy and counseling and

the program director of Disability Culture Activism Lab (DCAL) at the School of the Art

Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She has a MA in art therapy from SAIC, and MFA from the

University of California Berkeley. She is a disabled artist and disability culture worker

whose work focuses on wearable art made for and with self-identified disabled people.

As a part of the Disability Art Movement, Yi’s art, Crip Couture explores the issue of

intimacy, desire, and sexuality of the disabled bodymind. The wearable art objects and

their wearers call for a recognition of disability as an aesthetic choice and suggest the

possibility for a new genre of wearable art, Disability Fashion.

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Published

2021-10-08

How to Cite

Bridger, M., Erlikh, S., & Yi, C.- shan. (2021). Reverberation! A New Wave in Disability Art. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 10(2), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v10i2.784

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2021): VIBE: Challenging Ableism and Audism Through the Arts

Section

Articles

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