EARTH BOUND TOM BOY
Art Basel Miami 2014 is this week and naturally,
art is on my mind. All year, I look forward to not only the main Basel show,
but also the scores of satellite shows and gallery exhibits that have grown
incredibly over the last dozen years. I always attend as many as my wallet and
stamina allow.
Contemporary artworks most likely to draw me in
address issues of identity: identity of an individual or a group or a nation.
Art produced in Miami or by artists from the Magic City often deals with the
identity of immigrants and refugees. At Basel, female identity or identity
along the lines of sexual orientation are frequent themes.
But no matter where I go to view art – Miami, New York,
Mexico City, London, Madrid and beyond – I find a dearth of works about
disability identity. It’s not that it doesn’t exist. It simply isn’t anywhere
near 20 percent of identity-themed art, 20 being the oft-cited percentage of
people with disabilities in society.
It makes me a bit melancholy. It feels like one
more confirmation of our lack of presence, of our lack of a voice. One more
directive by society to either act/look/pass as non-disabled, or else go off to
live in some mythical, isolated disability underworld.
Though I’m a writer rather than an artist, it seems
like identity would be such a rich vein to mine for artists with disabilities. Just
taking the stereotypes and roles that have been foisted on us and turning those
back on themselves would make for provocative, edgy stuff indeed.
Want to disempower me with the label “wheelchair
bound?” I’ll photograph myself in bondage gear, my ankles bound to this wheeled
device that brings me power and freedom.
See me as a sorry little creature put on this Earth
to make you feel better about your own troubles? I’ll paint you as dung beetle
that I crush beneath my orthopedic shoe.
Think I sit at my window all day, looking at the
world I cannot join and mourning my brokenness? I’ll make a movie that shows
disability as the dominant culture, where so-called “normal” people hurl
themselves down staircases in order to be accepted.
http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2014/12/art-and-disability-identity-or-crushing.html
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