
Holton Lee
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What is Disability Arts?
This is a question that Disabled artists
have been struggling to answer since the movement began.
What it isn't
It is easiest to start off with what Disabled
artists generally agree that Disability Arts is not:
-
Disability Arts is NOT art made about
experience of impairment i.e. art that takes a disability or medical
condition as its subject.
- Disability Arts is NOT art made by disabled people
that fails to take experience of disability as its subject.
-
Disability Arts is NOT art made
by non-disabled people that takes disability as its subject.
-
Disability Arts is NOT art that
is controlled by non-disabled people.
However, none of these definitions are strictly true.
-
Within our society, images of
impairment are largely invisible. Where impairment is made visible,
it is usually portrayed within the Medical or Charity Models of
Disability, and it is usually non-disabled people who are creating
the images. So it can be argued that when Disabled artists make
work about our personal experience of impairment, this is inherently
political. It is political because the work is challenging the invisibility
of impairment, and it is political because the work is under the
direct control of disabled people.
-
Feminists have also believed
for a long time that it is important to make physical experiences
of life visible and to discuss and make theory around them, and
particularly when these experiences are different from those of
white, non-disabled men. Many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered
(LGBT) theorists agree with this, as do Black activists.
- Feminist theory also legitimises the fact that the
personal is political, and has challenged traditional ideas of what
is a valid subject matter for art.
- So it may be that the refusal to accept work
about impairment as being Disability Art comes from the dominance
of white male heterosexual artists within the Disability Arts movement,
rather than from any deeper theoretical objection.
- Artists who identify as Disabled have a different world
view to non-disabled artists. For example, we believe that there is
no such thing as a divide between the mind and the body. We also believe
that neuro-diversity should be celebrated, rather than a rational
mind being a goal to strive towards. This affects our whole approach
to our work - for example our use of colour, since 'acceptable' colour
palettes have traditionally reflected the 'Cartesian' mind/body divide.
So even when the subject of our work has nothing to do with disability,
the work may still be fundamentally different than it would be if
we did not identify as Disabled. Which means that it IS still Disability
Art.
- Artists are assumed to be non-disabled
(and white, and male). So when, for example, a blind woman creates
a painting or directs a film, or a Deaf man or a man with learning
difficulties choreographs and performs their own work, they embody
a challenge to this discourse; their art is revolutionary merely through
existing. Therefore it can be argued that all work produced by disabled
artists is Disability Art, whatever the subject matter.
-
Non-disabled people may share
our experience of disability, as our partners, parents, children,
family members, friends, carers and personal assistants. If they
are artists, they could potentially make work about this experience.
It would NOT be Disability Art if disabled people are stereotyped
within it, and/or if a non-Social Model of Disability is used, and/or
if the artist seeks to speak for disabled people. But it MIGHT be
Disability Art if non-disabled artists use the Social Model of Disability,
and focus on their own experiences within their work.
- Generally speaking, art produced in environments that
are controlled by non-disabled people is not defined as Disability
Art even when all of the participants are disabled. But an art student
might well choose to make work about their personal experience of
disability when the lecturers and other students are non-disabled,
and be supported to do this (though the majority are told instead
that they should NOT). This WOULD be Disability Art.
- And some communities of disabled people, particularly
people with learning difficulties, benefit from having their work
facilitated by non-disabled people/disabled people from different
impairment groups. Whether or not this is defined as being Disability
Art depends on whether disabled people are enabled to have the greatest
possible control over all aspects of the activity (though this is
more often NOT the case).

My p.a. Lee Elliott and I performing in
Opening Doors, a film-dance work commissioned by Bradford City
Council in 2004. Camera: Julie Newman
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What it is
Disabled artists do agree that the Social
Model of Disability is at the heart of the Disability Arts movement.
(If you are unfamiliar with the theoretical models of disability used
by the Disability Rights movement, I created a website about these
called Helping the Handicapped.
This was commissioned by the Sinnlos Disability Arts Festival in Graz,
Austria, when Graz was European Capital of Culture in 2003. The work
aimed to explain the theoretical basis of the UK and US Disability
Arts movements to a primarily non-disabled audience in Central Europe.)
Using the Social
Model of Disability, the Disability Arts movement challenges the fundamental
belief systems that govern 21st-century society in the developed world.
-
The Disability Arts movement challenges
the belief that impairment is abnormal. It returns impairment to
its rightful place as an integral and normal part of human experience.
-
The Disability Arts movement challenges
the belief that Disabled people are intrinsically different to non-disabled
people. It highlights the facts that anyone can become disabled,
and that the vast majority of us will become disabled at some point
before we die.
- The Disability Arts movement challenges the belief
that disabled people are less equal and less deserving of full human
rights than non-disabled people. It demands equality for all.
- The Disability Arts movement challenges the belief
that impairment is a tragedy, and that disabled people have a poorer
quality of life than non-disabled people as a result of our impairments.
It highlights the fact that what affects disabled people's quality
of life is prejudice and discrimination.
-
The Disability Arts movement challenges
the belief that prejudice and discrimination against disabled people
is normal. It highlights the fact that the barriers disabled people
face are created by society, rather than resulting inevitably from
our impairments.
-
The Disability Arts movement
challenges the belief that medical science is one step away from
eradicating impairment and creating immortality. It requires society
to recognise the limitations of science, to face up to reality,
and to change accordingly.
- The Disability Arts movement challenges the dominant
discourse of perfection. It points out that we can only be happy when
we accept the reality of the human condition as being vulnerable and
imperfect.
-
The Disability Arts movement challenges
the belief that only non-disabled people can make art. It reminds
the art world that many of the great artists of the past have
been disabled.
We make these challenges in work that includes
poetry and other writing, dance, theatre, live art, cabaret, music
and other performance, as well as visual arts such as painting, photography,
film and video - and, of course, multi-media. Our work covers the
same subject matter as other artists - life and death, relationships,
landscape and the environment, spirituality and so on. Disability
Art, though, is the art of most resistance.
The Disability Arts audience
One popular misconception is that
Disability Arts is aimed primarily at a disabled audience.
-
The Disability Arts movement began
alongside the Disability Rights Movement. Live performances grew
out of disability rights campaigners' experiences, and were produced
alongside political actions.
-
Initially, only disabled people were
interested in the work. And the only opportunities disabled artists
had to present their work was in segregated settings.
- However, the work produced by the Disability Arts movement
is aimed at everyone, and everyone can relate to it. Increasingly,
a majority of audience members are non-disabled.
- Disabled and non-disabled audience members may experience
the work differently. But all art work is experienced differently
by different people.
- As with other Fine Art movements, we are as much part
of the mainstream as we are separate from it.
Please note that these are my personal views. Many
other Disabled artists have written about the nature of Disability Arts.
As the NDACA website is developed, we will be including links to their
work online, as well as including it in the archive for study.

Image from my work Perception
I-IV; after Matisse: Backs I-IV; film on four 2m high bronze-edged lightboxes,
2003.
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