Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Arts Now, Emily Watlington, δημοσίευση Art in America [10/10/2022]
PHOTO HEATHER CROMARTIE
Art has played an integral—maybe even primary—role in the burgeoning movement for disability justice throughout the United States in the last decade. In memoirs, paintings and drawings, sculptures, installations, videos, and live performances, and in venues ranging from small galleries to movie theaters to professional sports arenas, disabled artists have shared their myriad perspectives on life, again and again. With persistence, these works have begun to chip away at the ableist beliefs that structure disability oppression, and we are beginning to see hints of the effects as the cultural tides turn.
In Hollywood, for instance, a pattern has been disrupted: for decades, it was said that, when a nondisabled actor was cast as a disabled character in a story centered around overcoming—Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking—they could all but count on an Academy Award. But in 2021, the award for Best Supporting Actor went to Deaf actor Troy Kotsur for his work in CODA, a movie about children of Deaf adults that also took home Best Picture. And in 2020, Crip Camp—a film made by a team of disabled activists—won Best Documentary. That same year, a Deaf artist, Christine Sun Kim, performed the national anthem in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl.
Disability-related concerns have long been written off as too niche, as affecting too few people, to deserve the limelight. But through cross-disability solidarity, artists and activists have formed myriad coalitions, following trails blazed by crip elders too numerous to name. With art as a primary weapon, they have demanded that their stories and perspectives infiltrate and change a culture riddled with ableist norms.
Η συνέχεια εδώ.
