DISRUPT AND RESIST
/Disrupt And Resist : A Love Letter To The Disability Community On What Showing Up For Each Other Can Be
January 22 - March 1, @ Gillespie Gallery of Art
GMU Art and Design Building, Fairfax
Curated by Jen White Johnson, Jeffrey Kenney, and Alissa Maru
Event Recordings
On Monday, February 26, at the Gillespie Gallery, Mason Exhibitions facilitated a Disability Justice Zine-Making Workshop with artist and advocate Jen White-Johnson.
00:05 - Introduction by Jen White Johnson
0:50 - Overview of the Exhibition and Zine Making
07:04 - Zine Making Tutorial: How to Fold a Mini Zine
13:50 - Closing Remarks by Jen White Johnson
About the Exhibition
DISRUPT AND RESIST features 12 contemporary designers and artists engaging in disability advocacy through creative resistance and anti-ableist disruption. This exhibition amplifies the ways disabled artists show up for themselves and each other. Shining a light on the joy and struggles of their lived experience, the diverse community of creative activists represented here explore and communicate the necessity for accessibility, disability justice, radical joy, belonging, and inclusivity. The show is a means to advocate for access-centered protest, the dismantling of the desire for a non-disabled body, while honoring and celebrating the unique beauty of each individual and the diversity and complexity of the minds and bodies that enrich our world.
This exhibition brings together a beautiful cohort of disabled or neurodivergent creators and allies who disrupt the narrative of disability through a wide range of approaches to material and subject matter, featuring an array of media and objects including video, photography, sculpture, printmaking, graphic design, fashion, and sound design. The artists represented here occupy diverse intersectional identities and engage in practices centered on disability activism, expression, and education. They use their creative capacities to foreground awareness and community building in addressing important issues, including destigmatizing medical conditions both physical and mental; highlighting the need for inclusive and accessible institutional practices and spaces; creating visibility for marginalized communities and non-conforming bodies; and centering empathy and joy in the discussions of our differences.
Olivia Brouwer
Soft-Spoken (a series of conversations with Tim Peters, Eric Bourgeois, and Jess Hannigan), 2020 - 2022
Acrylic on canvas, speaker wire, wooden blocks, headphones, cables, and touch board
20 x 40 inches, 20 x72 inches, 20 x 50 inches
In this photo, a person wearing a brown jacket with a rolled sleeve, and a green ring on their middle finger, is interacting with Olivia Brouwer’s artwork entitled ‘Soft Spoken’. This is a series of canvases, all hand-painted in Braille with embossed acrylic dots. Each canvas displays a series of questions asked by the artist and answers from blind, partially sighted, and colour blind individuals. Beside each canvas is a network of conductive copper tape connecting from touch-activated wooden buttons to a small touch board computer. The recording of the interview can be played when touching the wooden buttons.
Installation Views
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view from exhibit entrance showing door title and work by Jen White Johnson, Kellie Gillespie, Robert Andy Coombs, and Finnegan Shannon
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view from exhibit entrance showing door title and Black Disabled Lives Matter Graphic work by Jen White Johnson
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view from exhibit entrance showing hanging sculpture by Kellie Gillespie, 5 photographs by Robert Andy Coombs, and 2 blue bench sculptures by Finnegan Shannon
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view showing work by Jen White Johnson, Kellie Gillespie, and Gwynneth VanLaven
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view featuring work by Robert Andy Coombs, Alx Velozo, Andy Slater, Finnegan Shannon, Kellie Gillespie, Olivia Brouwer, Indira Allegra and Taekyeom Lee
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of visitors viewing work by Jen White Johnson including various poster and print designs, Knox Roxs artist book and Autistic Joy Mural graphic
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Jen White Johnson including various poster and print designs, Knox Roxs artist book and Autistic Joy Mural graphic
Disrupt and Resist close-up gallery view of work by Jen White Johnson including Knox Roxs artist book and Autistic Joy Mural graphic
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view with visitor viewing work by Robert Andy Coombs, also featuring work by Finnegan Shannon, Andy Slater, Indira Allegra and Kellie Gillespie
Disrupt and Resist gallery view showing Robert Andy Coombs installation 2 photographs titled Joey II and Hands on Neck
Disrupt and Resist showing Robert Andy Coombs installation view including 3 photos titled Not a Sub Bitch, Master, and They See Us Rollin’
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view with visitor viewing work by Robert Andy Coombs, also featuring work by Finnegan Shannon and Alx Velozo
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view with visitor viewing work by Olivia Brouwer, also featuring work by Finnegan Shannon, Andy Slater, Kellie Gillespie, Taekyeom Lee, and Alx Velozo
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of sculptural installation by Kellie Gillespie titled Over/Medicated/Under
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of sculptural installation by Kellie Gillespie titled Over/Medicated/Under with gallery visitor looking up into the hanging work
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of sculptural installation by Kellie Gillespie titled Over/Medicated/Under with Robert Andy Coombs and Jen White Johnson works in view
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view showing Gwynneth VanLaven installation on a yellow free standing wall titled Reflections from the Margins also in view is VanLaven’s series Bare Witness
Disrupt and Resist close-up gallery view of work by Gwynneth VanLaven including photos from Bare Witness series and Love Letter Traffic Cone
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of Alx Velozo and Andy Slater installations featuring chartreuse wall (Velozo) perpendicularly intersecting a blue wall (Slater)
Disrupt and Resist gallery view close up of Alx Velozo work title Pink Rbbr Cane sculpture with blue and chartreuse walls in background
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Andy Slater featuring wall text and headphones on 8ft square blue wall
Disrupt and Resist close-up gallery view of visitor engaging with 3 text-based works by Andy Slater titled Landing Site, Who’s Day Is It? and Witnesses
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view featuring work by Robert Andy Coombs, Alx Vleozo, Andy Slater, Rebirth Garments, Iris Xie and Indira Allegra
Disrupt and Resist close-up view of Taekyeom Lee installation with pedestal, graphics, and embossing machines
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of installation of Taekyeom Lee 3D printed embossers and Alx Velozo’s video Breath Play featured on wall-mounted monitor
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Olivia Brouwer and Taekyeom Lee
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of Olivia Brouwer installation, including 3 paintings from Soft-Spoken series
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of Olivia Brouwer installation, including 3 paintings from Soft-Spoken series and Contact kit on pedestal
Disrupt and Resist gallery view showing display of Rebirth Garments installation including photographs, wearables, and zines on blue and chartreuse corner aligned walls
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view, foreground showing installation of Rebirth Garments display and in background work by Jen White Johnson and Kellie Gillespie
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of sculptural mannequin display of Rebirth Garments including orange skirt pink chain boa and sequin headdress
Disrupt and Resist gallery close-up view of sculptural mannequin display of Rebirth Garments sequin headdress
Disrupt and Resist close-up gallery view of Alx Velozo's Speculative Grab Bar wall sculpture on chartreuse colored wall
Disrupt and Resist medium wide gallery view of Alx Velozo's Speculative Grab Bar and Pink Rbbr Cane sculptures with Jen White Johnson’s Black Disabled Lives Matter graphic in background
Disrupt and Resist wide gallery view of Alx Velozo's Speculative Grab Bar installation also featuring view of Rebirth Garments and Olivia Brouwer
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view showing works by Alx Velozo, Robert Andy Coombs, Finnegan Shannon, Jen White Johnson, and Rebirth Garments
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Indira Allegra, a video monitor displaying After My Death: A Mutable Decision. The background is a magenta tinted large window.
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Indira Allegra, 3 large photographs and video monitor displaying After My Death: A Mutable Decision
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Indira Allegra showing 5 large photographs from Body Warp series
Disrupt and Resist wide angle gallery view showing works by Iris Xie, Indira Allegra, and Robert Andy Coombs
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Iris Xie featuring 4 large 11 foot long paper scrolls in column-like configuration with titles “falling asleep”, “LYING AWAKE”, “Falling In”, “GETTING OUT.” Robert Andy Coombs photographs visible in background.
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Iris Xie featuring 4 large 11 foot long paper scrolls in column-like configuration with titles “falling asleep”, “LYING AWAKE”, “Falling In”, “GETTING OUT.” Rebirth Garments and Olivia Brouwer works visible in background.
Disrupt and Resist gallery view of work by Iris Xie featuring 4 large 11 foot long paper scrolls in column-like configuration with titles “falling asleep”, “LYING AWAKE”, “Falling In”, “GETTING OUT.” Works by Indira Allegra visible in background.
Disrupt and Resist close-up gallery view of Iris Xie works titled Signal Lost and No Sleep zine displayed on a pedestal
Participating Artists
A photo of a light-skin Black person with bold eyebrows, a small septum ring, and white shoulder-length hair and dark roots. They are wearing a white collared under a white knit sweater that has a pearl neckline, and red lipstick.
Indira Allegra is a conceptual artist and founder of Indira Allegra Studio - using weaving as a conceptual framework to craft living structures off the loom and in the world. A living structure can be performed as a song, a memorial, a text, or the movement of human and non-human behavior across a rolling planet. Of importance, are desires for transformation which haunt sites and beings experiencing them. Thinking as a poet, threads of connection between disparate experiences can be discovered. Moving as a weaver, the fates of seemingly disconnected histories, objects and beings are interlaced and transmuted into a greater whole.
Allegra's work has been featured in The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Art Journal, BOMB Magazine, e-flux, SF Chronicle, KQED and ARTFORUM and in exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Arts Incubator in Chicago, Center for Craft Creativity and Design, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Museum of the African Diaspora among others.
Allegra's writing has been featured in Theater, TEXTILE: Cloth and Culture, American Craft Magazine, Panorama Journal, Manual: A Journal About Art & Its Making, Cream City Review and Foglifter Journal among others. They have been the recipient of numerous awards including Creative Capital, United States Artists Fellowship, Burke Prize, Gerbode Choreographer Award, Art Matters Fellowship, Mike Kelley Artist Project Grant and CripTech Metaverse Fellowship.
Artist Website: https://www.indiraallegra.com/
Artist Instagram: @indiraallegrastudio
BODYWARP: Advance
2019
Archival Inkjet Prints
36" x 48"
Photos by Lindsay Tunkl
BODYWARP: Advance is a photo series exploring a weaver's queer relationship with a loom (performed for other looms) when the need to create cloth is abandoned. The Advance Series articulates the unspoken power play/intimacy between the maker and their tools.
BODYWARP explores weaving as performance and calls for a unique receptivity to tensions in political and emotional spaces. The work investigates looms as frames through which the weaver becomes the warp and is held under tension, as the artist performs a series of site-specific interventions using their body. Like the accumulation of memory in cloth, in BODYWARP, looms and other tools of the weaver's craft become organs of memory, pulling their body into an intimate choreography involving maker, tool, and the narrative of a place.
After My Death/A Mutable Decision, 2021
Performance
Single-channel video, Duration: 5 min 1 sec
Video by Nicholas Bruno
You've received the diagnosis. The money is gone. The relationship is over. You've surrendered to some loss which has happened but how do you make decisions to reconstruct your life? To feel that you are living again? "After My Death/A Mutable Decision" is an exploration of the liminal space which indecision creates as ideas take form, dissolve and find new shapes as we move through our losses.
Polaroid of the artist, a white man with blue eyes and blonde hair, from the shoulders up. Staring deep into the camera, you notice a fresh cut above his left eyebrow on his forehead with stitches.
Robert Andy Coombs grew up in Michigan's majestic Upper Peninsula where he spent his childhood roaming the great outdoors. He started photographing his walkabouts in middle school and moved on to portraiture in high school. Coombs received a scholarship to Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids Michigan. During his third year in undergrad, Coombs sustained a spinal cord injury due to a gymnastics training accident. After a year of recovery, he returned to KCAD and received his BFA in photography in 2013. Coombs' photography explores the intersections of disability and sexuality. Themes of relationships, caregiving, fetish, and sex are depicted and explored throughout. Coombs graduated from the Yale School of Art with his MFA amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently residing in sunny Miami Florida.
Artist Website: https://www.robertandycoombs.com/
Artist Instagram: @robertandycoombs_
A white man with neglected sandy blond hair and a red and grey beard. He has blue eyes that are trying to make contact with you. He is partially smiling with his mouth closed. He has dimples. His mother says he looks like Beau Bridges.
Andy Slater is a blind Chicago-based media artist, writer, performer, and
Disability advocate/loudmouth. Andy holds a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a 2022 United States Artists fellow, 2022-2023 Leonardo Crip Tech Incubator fellow and a 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago.
He is a teaching artist with the Atlantic Center for the Arts’ Young SoundSeekers program, Midwest Society For Acoustic Ecology, and Creative Users’ Sensory Shift program. Andy’s current work focuses on advocacy for accessible art and technology, Alt-Text for sound and image, the phonology of the blind body, spatial audio for extended reality, and sound design for film, dance, and digital scent design. Andy is a member of the 3Arts Disability Culture Leadership Initiative New Art City accessibility board, and the founder of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists.
Artist Website : https://www.thisisandyslater.net/
Artist Instagram: @thisisandyslater
Re/ Your Prescription Has Been Delayed. Sound installation - Audio Link Here
Echoalia, 2023, Sound installation, 1 hour/ every 15 min - Explore this sound installation by visiting our gallery.
Invisible Ink, 2022, Sound installation
Landing Site, 2020 Oil on canvas, 6 in x 4 in
Witnesses,2021 Oil on canvas, 6 in x 4 in
Who’s Day Is It?, 2019 Mixed media on wood, 4in x 2.5in
Finnegan Shannon is an artist experimenting with forms of access. They intervene in ableist structures with humor, earnestness, and rage. Some of their recent work includes Anti-Stairs Club Lounge, an ongoing project that gathers people together who share an aversion to stairs; Alt Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; and Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces. They have done projects with the Queens Museum, the High Line, MMK Frankfurt, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and Nook Gallery. Their work has been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, an Eyebeam fellowship, and grants from Art Matters Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Disability Visibility Project. They live and work in Brooklyn, NY.
Artist Website : https://shannonfinnegan.com/
Artist Instagrams: @finneganshann0n
A white person with buzzed hair wearing a collared button down shirt with a patchwork pattern of black and white stripes and neon green and blue zebra stripes.
Do you want us here or not, 2020
A blue bench that reads “this exhibition has asked me to stand for too long” on the back and “sit if you agree'“ on the seat.
It was hard to get here, 2020
A blue bench that reads “it was hard to get here” on the back and “rest here if you agree'“ on the seat.
A white performer in a white mesh shirt dances with a lavender cane across a floor covered with cornstarch. A large black speaker looms in the corner of the room and the cornstarch holds the trace of the dancer’s movement and floor contact with their cane and feet.
Alx Velozo is a trans and disabled sculptor, educator, and performance artist raised in North Florida: occupied Timucua land, currently residing in Baltimore, Maryland: occupied Pascataway land. Their installations and performances combine cultural imaginations of illness, touch, kink, the medical industrial complex, and kinesthetic learning models. They explore this research through mold-making processes, movement and object-based performances, and facilitation. They most recently received their M.F.A. in Sculpture and Extended media from Virginia Commonwealth University, and previously received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Velozo has exhibited, taught, and facilitated in Baltimore, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chilchota, MX, Montreal, QC.
Artist Website: https://alxvelozo.com/
Artist Instagram: @alx.velozo
Speculative Grab Bar #3, 2023
This graphite rubbed sculpture is composed of 3 weaving tubes mounted on a white wall. The tubes are bent in various directions with a marbleized sky blue rubber hardware at each point they meet the wall. There are a total of 6 points of contact fixed by this sky rubber hardware.
Pink Rbbr Cane, 2022
A pink rubber cane with a gray stopper drapes over a bright blue acrylic stand. The simple acrylic stand is made up of an upside down u shape for the rubber cane’s handle to rest on, a vertical acrylic rod and a rectangular platform, all of which are a bright transparent blue.
Alx Velozo, Breath Play, 2021
Close up video of a white cane-using performer costumed in transparent latex t-shirt and shorts moving through a room filled with transparent balloons. The balloons pop and squeak against the performer’s movement.
A close-up photo of a kind looking white woman with freckles, green eyes, brown short hair, a wide nose, and a close-mouth smile with dimples. She is wearing green, yellow, and black glasses, and a yellow knit sweater.
Gwynneth VanLaven (she/they) is an artist, activist and facilitator whose practice includes multimodal forms. She holds an MFA from George Mason University in Critical Art Practice. Gwynneth taught there until relocating to Michigan, where she is studying at University of Michigan for a Masters of Social Work in Interpersonal Practice and Community Change. Gwynneth’s artworks have been shown in numerous exhibitions and publications nationally and globally, including in The Washington Post and Performance Research, at the Smithsonian Institution and Kennedy Center. Gwynneth leads InterPlay and DanceAbility, both accessible and inclusive whole mindbody forms, drawing on self- and other- inquiry and connection.
Artist Website: www.vanlaven.art
This is a series of four photographs depicting Gwynneth VanLaven with her body wrapped around a traffic cone in various positions. The first photo shows a large cylindrical traffic cone laying on it’s side with her legs dangling over it. The second photo shows the traffic cone upright with her legs and arm wrapped around it. The third photo shows the traffic cone laying on it’s side with her arms and head hanging over the cone toward the camera. The fourth photo shows Gwynneth trying to rip the traffic cone apart. The final photo is of “Bare Witness, Love Letter Cone”, which is a traffic cone with a hole cut out that invites you to deposit your fears of danger, stories of near misses, or solidarity with the disability community in the cone slot. The cone is covered in black painted smears.
A camera is said to capture, or freeze an action in time and space. So too does a traumatic event. Unable to stop the car hurtling toward my place on the sidewalk, I feel captured by memory and frozen. I use photography to unfreeze, in order to create slower time for contemplation. For some time since the event of a car careening into and crushing my body, I have been playing in the realm of the unexpected. The traffic barrels develop trauma stories told in exhaust grime and battle scars, commingling with mine. The stills in Bare Witness hold danger up for contemplation for the slow act of falling in love with uncertainty. And yet the barrel stands still at attention, holding vigil, bare to the world, to both signal and witness for us all, the presence of vehicular danger.
An Afro-Latina woman wearing a light brown wide-brim hat, round yellow dangling earrings, and a black graphic t-shirt. She is standing in front of her artwork of a black fist that reads “Black Disabled Lives Matter" with an infinity sign.
Jen White Johnson is a disabled and Neurodivergent Afro-Latina art activist and design educator whose visual work aims to uplift disability justice narratives in design. As an artist-educator with Graves disease and ADHD, Jen uses photography, zines, and collage art to explore the intersection of content and caregiving, emphasizing redesigning ableist visual culture. Jen has presented her disability justice activist work and collaborated with a number of brands and art spaces across print and digital such as Target, Coachella and Adobe Design. Her photo and design work has been featured in The Washington Post, AfroPunk, Art in America, The New York Times, and Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation and is permanently archived in libraries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and most recently acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2020 she was an honoree on the Diversability’s D-30 Disability Impact List and In 2021 she was listed as 20 Latino Artists to watch on Today.com Jen has an MFA in Graphic Design from The Maryland Institute College of Art, she currently lives in Baltimore with her husband Kevin and 10-year-old son Knox.
Artist Website: https://jenwhitejohnson.com/
Artist Instagram: @jtknoxroxs
Photo 1: A Black first with an infinity symbol on the wrist that reads “Black Disabled Lives Matter”
Photo 2: A collage of photos of Jen’s son, who is autistic, in various settings engaging in play, relaxation, sensory seeking, and more.
Photo 3: Bold yellow text that reads “Disrupt and Resist”
Photo 4: A graphic with a rainbow spiral/psychedelic design that reads “disability is not a bad word”
Photo 5: A variety of “Black Disabled Lives Matter” pins in black and red
Photo 6: “The Anti-Ableist Art Educators Manifesto” created by Jen White Johnson, printed on yellow paper with black font. The back cover has a variety of stickers designed by Jen.
Photo 7: Package of “Kids Solidarity Mini Zine Pack” designed by Jen White-Johnson and her son Knox
A white woman with long brown hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a dark blue t-shirt and short necklace. She is standing behind her original sculpture.
Kellie Gillespie, a sculptural artist and mental health activist, intertwines her personal narrative with her creative process, creating a profound connection between conversations on mental health, trauma, and recovery. While her narrative may not be essential for formal comprehension, understanding her story enhances the depth of engagement with the visual work she produces.
Gillespie's artistic process is a labor-intensive journey that demands both mental and physical endurance. She delves into materiality, initiating a dialogue with distinctive materials to explore their capabilities and limitations. Employing a retrograde process, she begins with a material, engages in intense experimentation, and organically arrives at a destination of completion. Her sculptures typically incorporate no more than three materials, achieving evocative fruition through singular object repetition.
The exhibition features "over/medicated/under," a installation that recontextualizes prescription medication by transforming over 5,000 collected prescription bottles into a visually stimulating and evocative structure. Gillespie's work activates site-specific locations, inviting viewers to explore and personally interact with the installation's dynamic organic structure. The title, "over/medicated/under," distinctly references the frustrations of navigating through the challenges of finding appropriate medication. Gillespie captures the grueling yet necessary process of dealing with side effects, treatment-resistant symptoms, and the prolonged wait until the right combination is discovered. In essence, her work becomes a visual narrative that speaks to the complexities of mental health treatment and the resilience required to overcome obstacles on the path to recovery.
Artist Website: https://www.kelliegillespie.com/
Artist Instagram: @kellie.gillespie.art
Iris Xie (they/them/theirs) is a disabled, neurodivergent, queer trans nonbinary 2nd generation Chinese American multi-discipline writer, artist, and designer from the Bay Area, and has a Design MFA and double major in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and English from UC Davis. Iris designs interactive installations that include literary forms of lyric games and visual poetry and stim objects that explore neurodivergence and invisible disabilities through the framework of crip technoscience. Their knowing-making practice centers on finding rest and self-trust while traversing liminality through discovering their political identities as a disabled queer trans person of color.
You can follow Iris on Twitter at @irisxie and on Instagram at both @dodounicorn and @irisxie_makes, and their linktree at @irisxie.
Iris, a light skinned Asian person with long, wavy black hair and gold and black rimmed hexagonal glasses, is smiling directly at the camera. They are wearing a deep v neck light-medium gray t-shirt.
A white woman with light brown/dirty blonde hair that is short with messy curls, filled in eyebrows and red lipstick. She is wearing a black and white horizontal pinstripe t-shirt.
Photo credit : Felicia Byron and Leslie Loksi Chan
Olivia Brouwer is an interdisciplinary artist based in Cambridge, Ontario. In 2016, she graduated from the Art and Art History joint program, specializing in painting and printmaking, at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College Institute of Technology.
As a partially blind artist, Brouwer explores the idea of blindness through her art, melding organic and geometric abstraction with scenes inspired by natural organisms and spiritual teachings relating to vision from both a metaphorical and literal sense. Inspired by the Rorschach Inkblot Test, she addresses blindness by examining ideas surrounding belief, meaning, clarity, and sight with an abstract image. Her most recent work explores visual art accessibility and the activation of human senses beyond the reliance of vision, such as touch and sound, enabling an inclusive experience for both visually impaired and sighted viewers
Artist Website: https://www.oliviabrouwer.com/
Artist Instagram: @olivetreeonthemount
Two artworks included in this exhibition, Soft-Spoken and CONTACT Kit No. 11, are part of a collection of artworks called The Scales That Fall From Our Eyes. This collection borrows imagery from the Biblical story of Paul’s conversion, using the symbolism of scales to embody the transformative process of shedding prejudiced or inaccessible traditions to surface more just and inclusive practices. By intentionally obscuring visuals and using Braille translations, the Soft-Spoken series and the CONTACT Kit invite us to engage with touch and sound, and challenge the conventional modalities of a gallery. It also draws attention to the necessity of including non-sighted audiences in the art community by changing the way we ‘view’ art. These artworks are an invitation to attune into sense and perception, through the abstracted visuals and Braille language works, to interact with art in different ways and to enrich these experiences in non-visual ways.
Soft-Spoken (a series of conversations with Tim Peters, Eric Bourgeois, and Jess Hannigan)
Acrylic on canvas, speaker wire, wooden blocks, headphones, cables, and touch board
20 inches by 40 inches; 20 inches by 72 inches; 20 inches by 50 inches
2020 - 2022
This is a series of three canvases, all hand-painted in Braille with embossed acrylic dots. Each canvas displays a series of questions asked by the artist and answers from blind, partially sighted, and colour blind individuals. Beside each canvas is a network of conductive copper tape connecting from touch-activated wooden buttons to a small touch board computer. The recording of the interview can be played when touching the wooden buttons.
This series was made possible with the help of Tim Peters, Eric Bourgeois, and Jess Hannigan. In these interviews, which I conducted during the COVID19 pandemic, the participants share their lived experience of how blindness or colour blindness have been part of their lives. Each interview has been translated into Braille and painted onto canvas. By touching the conductive materials, a recording of the interview can be heard through the headphones provided. This series was created with support from Factory Media Centre, Hamilton Artists Inc, Centre[3], Hamilton Arts Council, Canada Arts Council, and Ontario Arts Council.
CONTACT Kit No. 11
Acrylic on panel, Dura-lar film, glue dots, grommets, cardboard box, silkscreen prints on Stonehenge paper, vellum, paper clips, staples
12 inches by 12 inches by 2 inches
2023
A black, square panel is embossed with an abstract design in acrylic paint. On the right of the panel is a square frosted Dura-lar sheet with scale-shaped, removeable pieces with embossed Braille words that describe the painting’s appearance. On the shelf below sits a cardboard box with a tear-shape printed in black on the front and the word, “CONTACT” in text and embossed in Braille. An accordion-style booklet, which is kept closed with an embossed vellum sleeve, is opened to display embossed pages with six scale-shaped outlines and an underline underneath each shape. The first page has a pocket that holds the artist statement, artist bio, and instructions for how to use the kit. There is a Braille translation of this information in a separate booklet. The last page of the booklet is filled with lines for writing a reflection of the artwork and experience.
Taekyeom Lee is a multidisciplinary designer, educator, and maker. He is currently an Assistant professor of Graphic Design at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He received an MFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research explores unconventional materials and alternative solutions to create tangible typography, graphics, and even designed objects using digital fabrication. He infused 3D printing into his research and has been experimenting with various methods and materials for tactile experiences. His latest project aims to make graphic design more accessible with tactility and materiality.
This photo shows a 3D printed embosser created by Taekyeom Lee, which imprints the Braille alphabet on sheets of paper that are fed through the embosser.
Lee's research delves into unconventional materials and digital methods within graphic design, leading to the creation of 3D type, graphics, and designed objects. The exploration began with two fundamental questions: Where does typography find its place in the post-digital age? How can we bridge the gap between digital and physical experiences? Post-digital typography involves tangible experiences assisted or created with various digital controls. Cutting-edge digital techniques play a pivotal role in translating intangible ideas into tangible design products with physical substance. Augmented reality further strengthens the connection between analog and digital realms.
In response to this evolving landscape, Lee actively incorporates digital design and various fabrication methods, notably 3D printing and CAD design, in his research. In a broader sense, his work aims to develop, test, and discover the role of emerging technologies in the design process and creative practices.
Artist Website: https://portfolio.taekyeom.com/
Artist Instagram: @taekyeom
An Asian man with grown out black hair, round black glasses, a mustache and beard. He is wearing a collared button down blue and red checkerboard plaid shirt under a dark jacket. He is holding a remote and standing in front of a presentation screen.
A portrait of Sky Cubacub and non-binary Filipinx artist from Chicago IL. The image shows the artist with light brown skin adorned in a magenta pink scaled headdress that fits close to their head and extends over the forehead in a v-like shape. Their top has iredescent scales in magenta and white. They wear an over-sized purple and pink sewn and stuffed scarf or necklace. They are smiling with their eyes closed. Their hands are facing them up at their shoulders holding purple objects in scaled blue and great gloves.
Sky Cubacub is a non-binary queer and disabled Filipinx human from Chicago, IL. Rebirth Garments is their line of wearables for the full spectrum of gender, size, and ability. They maintain the notion of Radical Visibility, a movement based on claiming our bodies. Through the use of bright colors, exuberant fabrics, and innovative designs, they refuse to assimilate— spearheading a Queer and Disabled dress reform movement. Cubacub is the editor of the Radical Visibility Zine, a magazine for Queer and Disabled teens based off of their manifesto.
Artist Website: https://rebirthgarments.com/
Artist Instagram: @rebirthgarments
