Why Disability in the Arts Matters
Long before people knew how to read and write, communities relied on traditional art mediums to share stories and ideas. These works of art paint a vivid yet cruel picture of how people with disabilities were perceived and treated throughout history, often depicted as freaks, grotesque or comical. Unlike today where we have countless examples in media of how to treat others with dignity, respect, and equality, civilizations for centuries did not have adequate access to information to explore new ways of thinking. Consequently, the depictions of disability in visual culture carried over to sociopolitical culture, negatively impacting human conditioning. The sparse framework of disability, too, reflects society’s long tendency to consider people with disabilities as unworthy, not valuable, and as a problem that needs to be fixed. Examples of public perceptions for centuries can be seen in Pieter Bruegel’s oil paintings, The Cripples (1568) and The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559). In both pieces, several subjects have been depicted with their mouths hanging open, which is often perceived as a sign of intellectual disability rather than a sign of muscle weakness. atrophy, or facial paralysis. Other faces have been purposefully covered with a mask, thus hiding their identities and reflecting how the public wanted to hide and objectify the disabled community. Additionally, people are dressed in dirty, brown clothing with visible holes and in the 1559 painting, are in costume, performing various acts during a “freak” carnival, while others can be seen begging for money.
Today, there are still some cultures where disabilities actually reflect poorly on families, such as the belief that disability is a punishment due to a family member’s prior wrongdoings. In these places, ableist and bigoted viewpoints persist. Unfortunately, these ideas lead to oppression and segregation, significantly impacting the disabled person’s access to proper education, medical care, and socialization.
Because there has been more attention given to disability studies since the Americans with Disabilities Act was established in 1990, researchers have been able to explore the anthropological differences between past and current day depictions to form a consensus on how disabled communities have been perceived throughout history.
So why does disability in the arts matter?
Not only do these artistic depictions shed light on societal norms and discriminatory practices, they also give artists a way to educate others, to visually express often unheard, silenced voices, and to share lived experiences a person with disabilities faces on a daily basis. In my own artistic practice, I often draw inspiration from the natural world’s cycle of life and death, creating multiple exposure self-portraits layered with medical imaging, medical aids, and patterns from nature on objects associated with medicine and domestic life, to reflect invisible symptoms and genetic information only attainable on a microscopic or cellular level. Most of all, I create to push toward the depiction of disability in art to redefine what it means to be disabled, promote inclusion and awareness through visual communication, and educate viewers who would otherwise be uninformed.
