Raised in the marshlands of Essex, Ju originally trained as a dancer, but changed to studying film when she developed a spinal curvature as a teenager. She enjoyed her student years rather more than the politicians whom she studied alongside in the early 80s - such as Caroline Flint - apparently did, managing a band and living with its lead guitarist while producing no-budget local media projects within a scene that also included Gurinder Chadha, Charlie Higson and Steve Caplin.

In fact, Ju spent another decade pursuing two more degrees part-time as a perpetual student until debt finally convinced her to kick the habit. Having set up a community zine in Norwich when she first graduated with a lower-second class honours degree, Ju soon moved to London and worked alongside her studies as a social affairs journalist for a variety of different voluntary-sector and campaign groups and magazines. She also continued to enjoy life as a part-time rock chick, activist and cartoon writer.

In the early 1990s Ju embraced multimedia as a way of integrating her various art forms with her DIY media origins. Her alias ju90 then arose from a project exploring notions of identity and power relationships in cyberspace. She was forced to shorten her birth name as a result of her alias being over-enthusiastically welcomed in real life - to the point when she had a choice between doing that or of having two different identities - but did, however, welcome in turn the possibilities offered by having both an androgynous name and title.

In 1997 Ju was prescribed a spinal brace, and rediscovered her per-former self when she decorated it and used the experience of wearing it to explore social constructions of disability via what would now be called a blog. Having decided that she couldn't wait any longer for men to change, she also realized that she wasn't interested anyway and became a lesbian. Perversely, this has improved her relationship with her family, as well as with her male friends and fans. She also realized that she preferred electronica to rock, and ditched her Glastonbury pass for Matthew Glamorre's club scene where Bishi and Patrick Wolf were being nutured as teenagers.

Ju also became the first person in the UK to present her PhD (in Communication and Image Studies) as a hypertext [website], showing what an accessible and engaging textbook could look like if it was presented as a website combining still image, text and video with multiple reading paths. Her specialist subject was girl culture and girl power, as manifested in the girls' school stories that the majority of British girls enjoyed reading in the twentieth century - long after the critics had declared the books dead. (The most recent St Trinian's film proves, of course, how much we still love to parody the genre today, and the fond place that it takes in our collective affections.)

The 21st century did not start auspiciously when Ju became seriously ill after attending a journalists' conference on the west coast of Ireland, and she later failed to make a full recovery. After the organizers refused to apologise, Ju successfully took them to a Tribunal where they were found guilty of four counts of discrimination, two of them major, and of personal injury. Ju was the first person to win a case under the clauses of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) as they relate to trade unions, and this was despite having to represent herself with the support of volunteers because legal aid is not available for DDA cases. The National Union of Journalists continues to refuse to apologise to her.

Ju's artistic practice is situated within the theories and traditions of the international disability arts movement. She works mainly with digital lens-based media, but also with performance, text and sound. Despite failing her Art A Level, Ju's work has been presented/commissioned/exhibited in the US, Canada, Australia, India, Finland, Austria and Switzerland as well as the UK, with funders including the Arts Council England and the cities of Graz, Zurich, Leicester and Bradford. Her most recent exhibition - Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability - opened on 31 January at the National Institute of Medical Research, following an artist's residency funded by the Wellcome Trust. Ju is currently a New Work Network Associate, and is a former Artsadmin Digital Fellow. She continues to be artist in residence at the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA) at Holton Lee. Click here to read a full list of exhibitions, commissions etc.

Ju also runs a small-press publishing company, Bettany Press and works as a consultant. In her 'spare' time she co-Chairs the Trade Union Disability Alliance (TUDA), with Caroline Gooding, and Regard, the national LGBT Disabled people's organization, with James Haskings, and enjoys dinghy sailing. She has been based in Newham, East London for more than 20 years, with the exception of the 18 months she spent living in a surfer's community in Cornwall while completing her PhD. She has no gallery representation, but along with her Westie Genie is an Ugly model.

Photo: Bob Jones/Gaze