In my experience, living with Crohn’s Disease often feels like tightrope-walking a dotted line that divides a busy street. Invisibility on the left. Visibility on the right. Toeing the thin divider between the two as flare-ups and remission grapple for my attention from each lane.
Most of the time, my disability is invisible. The biologic self-injections that keep me outside of hospital walls often take place in the solitude of midnight. The mental gymnastics I practice to contort my dietary needs around higher education’s schedule are similarly opaque to others, occurring before I leave my apartment in the morning. The quiet moment when I sag into my empty couch after I’ve parted ways with a particularly nasty flare-up…that’s always a moment of silence for myself. An acceptance of the hard days I’ve weathered and those still to come. Even more invisible—especially since I spend much of my time advocating for disability pride. For me, disability didn’t become visible until I had an allergic reaction to a treatment that made my joints lock up. For two months, it hurt to put in a contact or type or walk. My movement—or my lack thereof—pushed me further toward the visibility end of the in/visibility spectrum. It’s been that way with both my significant flare-ups. Disappearing from physical classrooms and social events until my extreme invisibility makes my disability hyper-visible.
After years of living on this continuum of constant fluctuation between the visible and the invisible, my research and creative experiences began gravitating toward better understanding and expressing invisible experiences. I devote my research to the communication of disability, and I create art that reconciles the dual invisibility of chronic illness and multiracial heritage with the visibility of my female gender.
Here, I document the 2024 Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity arts exhibition’s organizational process, featured art and lessons learned. Though I served as the primary organizer, I spent four months working closely with contributors from the Cornell University community to “co-curate” the exhibition, a process I define by its collaborative nature as I regularly sought and implemented input that shaped numerous exhibition elements (e.g., exhibition title, art descriptions, visitor engagement activities). The exhibition featured visual, tactile and sonic art from nine students and staff across campus, including myself. From fiber to plaster and pill bottles to rocks, each piece was constructed to communicate its creator’s unique experiences of in/visibility. This article is organized by its contributions to our understanding of (co)-curatorial practices, disability representation, and invisible experiences of disability and neurodiversity. I conclude with key takeaways and open questions for readers who may engage with disability arts as curators, artists, and visitors, at present and in future.
In McRuer & Johnson’s (2014) virtual roundtable on crip ways of knowing, Carrie Sandahl writes that disability arts “explore disability experience in new and unexpected ways and model alternative ways of being and doing ‘this thing called human’ (to borrow a line from Neil Marcus’s Storm Reading)” (p. 157). In this article, I extend ongoing discussions surrounding disability arts to locally-generated art that showcases (in)visible disability and neurodiversity, deepening explorations of the complexities of the human mind as well as the body. I expand on notions of access and care in the process and exhibition of disability and neurodiversity arts, highlighting what it means to bring experiences that often go unrecognized in daily life from the implicit to the explicit, in private workshops and a public exhibition. Such an expansive arts space warrants a flexible curation process like the “exploratory” practice described by Cachia (2013), one that “flows from a declared position of not-knowing rather than a fairly common curatorial position that originates in ‘connoisseurship’” (p. 260). As such, I committed to a curatorial process of learning from and alongside contributors, situating the curation of the exhibition’s elements in the knowledge and lived experience of its artists whenever possible.
Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity was my first experience with disability arts curation, and I am grateful to those who have published learnings from their artistic or curatorial processes throughout the past three decades. Kuppers has written generatively about her work as a disability culture activist and community performance artist (2011; 2019). Cooley and Fox (2014; 2022; 2024) have published extensively on disability arts curation. Cachia’s (2022) edited collection of essays on art activism serves as a series of invaluable case studies for creative access.
Before I absorbed these teachings, my first introduction to disability arts came from outside of academic publishing venues: the Access/VSA Emerging Young Artists Program (The Kennedy Center, n.d.). Specifically, its 2011 to 2021 catalogs. I had just begun translating my own experiences of disability into art when I came across the program’s website in 2023. Everything about its materials—the nature of the art, the content of the artist statements—was new to me, especially as someone who had never previously self-identified as an artist, let alone a disability arts creator, before I fell into sketching. The bold, incisive commentaries these young artists made beautifully captured disability as it interfaces with other identities and the contours of their lives, unveiling broader social structures. Every painting, sculpture, photograph contained a universe of multitudes, and each universe was put in conversation through themes like MERGE and Connected. I was struck by the plurality of responses to these questions living at intersections of disability, creativity and connection. These abstract concepts that underpin so much of our daily lives were made tangible, and this felt like an accomplishment reminiscent of one of my favorite disability concepts. In writing about “crip time,” Kafer (2013) called for institutions and artifacts of time to “bend” around disabled minds and bodies as well as their unique negotiations of the world rather than require disabled bodies to conform to normative structures of time. Reading the Access/VSA catalogs, I felt the program organizers and contributors mapped this reversal of norms onto numerous other constructs, bending notions of disability, creativity and connection around disabled artists’ unique experiences of them. The exhibition narratives captivated me, and I wanted to better understand their construction.
Around the same time, a graduate course devoted to theory development introduced me to Specker et al. (2022), which summarized a visual arts exhibition’s “curatorial narrative” as comprised of its topic, lighting, colors, and artist statements, in addition to the order and spatiality of its pieces. When it came to mapping these principles onto disability arts, a budding interest of mine, I began to wonder: Whose stories are being told? Who is telling them? And how? My engagement with the Access/VSA catalogs illuminated the role that catalogs and artist statements can play in asynchronous, remote access to disability arts; how about the other curatorial narrative components present within in-person exhibition spaces (and, in the vein of Kuppers’ (2019) and Cooley and Fox’s (2022) call for process over product, the planning process itself)?
Cooley and Fox (2024) describe the social and material construction of exhibition spaces, positioning their curatorial practice as generating galleries that become a “space of encounter” where “visitors, artists, and curators do not exist in a binary; rather, crip curation produces something shared across people, objects, memory, and experience” (p. 607). The broader context of these “spaces of encounter” matters, too; Kuppers (2007) notes that “Art encounters occur differently, and with different attentions, in train stations and art galleries” (p. 7). In their description of two disability arts exhibitions that they curated together, Cooley and Fox (2014) emphasize the key role of staging disability arts exhibitions in higher education settings, where underrepresented social and political perspectives can be allocated space.
Once I determined invisibility would be the connecting thread of my first exhibition, I considered potential spaces that might house Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity. The curatorial literature above emphasizes the politics of choosing a staging location. If not extended careful attention, it could seem a mundane logistical choice. But upon further inspection, it becomes clear that the exhibition space itself is an essential part of a curatorial narrative, with its context shaping engagement with the art displayed. The shape of the room itself determines the possibilities for the featured art, from proximity between pieces to the maximum scale of each piece and the broader capacity for number of art pieces. The space constrains how many stories get to be told, as well as their dimensions, and in some cases their mediums (which can have particular consequences when considering McLuhan’s (1964) positioning of medium as so consequential its character can become the message ultimately communicated). For this reason, I knew the exhibition space would need to maximize contributors’ choice of medium, feature an ample range of table heights and seating options, and provide access to numerous outlets, among other considerations. My goal was to remove as many constraints as I could from art medium and scale; if medium is a key component of the story told, I wanted to extend rather than limit possibilities.
Beyond the physical form of the exhibition space, location plays a major role in who gets to be in the audience. While exhibitions may technically be open to the public, location determines whom the exhibition will be most geographically accessible to. A train station exhibition will likely be explored by travelers, while a campus exhibition might find many of its visitors emerge from students, staff and faculty who frequent that university’s halls. Ultimately, Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity found its home within Cornell University’s Department of Communication, where I am working toward my doctoral degree, with art and visitor engagement activities sprawling from its main hub through the glass-walled rooms on each corner of its floor. Because I had decided to extend an open call to disabled and neurodiverse students, staff and faculty at the university, an on-campus location seemed most fitting; after all, a local exhibition that took place on campus could render invisible experiences of disability and neurodiversity visible to peers, instructors, and colleagues in particular, given the geographic accessibility.
Following this logic, the choice made sense, yet I found myself stuck on its direct conflict with achieving greater access for non-university affiliates in the local community who similarly might have never been exposed to disability arts but would not usually attend an event on campus given its geographic separation from the rest of the city, even if public. There was no great solution; hosting the event off campus might discourage others who would be encouraged to attend because of its convenience on campus. Ultimately, with hopes that marketing to people beyond the university’s walls via word-of-mouth and social media would attract local attendance, I decided to host the exhibition on campus, which would be most familiar to contributors. Though it was well-attended, most visitors ended up being university affiliates. The exact location on campus, I decided with the contributors in early efforts toward co-curation. They selected my department’s space because they recalled the other available option was known to be less physically accessible.
But what is access? Is it geographic, as I suggested in the previous section? Thinking expansively, beyond traditional interpretations of access as retrofitting a space or experience for diverse bodies and minds, is access an aesthetic, a theme, a methodology, a politic (Joyce & Guttman, 2022; Rieger et al., 2022)? Cachia’s (2022a) Curating Access explored numerous possibilities, illuminating curatorial reflections, collaborative practices and artistic praxis that center access in all these forms. From the perspectives of Cachia and featured authors, access should be inextricable from exhibitions and their art. Cachia (2022b) and Villarías’ (2022) implementations of “creative access,” an accessible approach to curation, similarly situate the curation itself as inseparable from access. Joyce and Guttman (2022) incorporate access as aesthetic into an interview project that features aural, visual and textual options for engagement, with access baked into every aspect. Rieger et al. (2022) describe codesign as a method for collaboratively shaping experiences of museums and art with blind and low vision visitors via mechanisms like descriptive tours and tactile art.
When planning Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity, I wove in considerations related to the more conventional definition of access throughout, working with contributors to identify access needs for themselves and anticipated visitors. Two sensory break spaces—one in a private room and one in a quiet but open corner—emerged, selected with the help of several neurodivergent contributors. As did a stack of optional masks, ear plugs, hand sanitizer stations, abundant seating, lower art display tables and well-spaced pieces to allow ample room for wheelchair navigation and art viewing. In addition, I created a screen-reader compatible version of the catalog in Word, accessible via QR codes pasted around the exhibition space.
I also took up access as it relates to Villarías’ (2022) call to search for art contributions from disabled people who are not necessarily established artists already showing in galleries and featured in major publications. I was very interested in this aspect of curatorial narratives: who gets to create and exhibit their art? Many of the people who ultimately participated in the exhibition had no prior experience creating art related to their experiences of disability and neurodiversity, and I perceived the exhibition as an opportunity to expand access to disability arts more broadly, for contributors and visitors who might not have previously been presented with such opportunities. I felt this was particularly evocative throughout the process of planning and execution, in part because of my own experience of becoming an artist in direct response to my evolving experience of disability, and in part because it opened up infinite possibilities for the kinds of motivations and intended audiences behind the showcased art.
There has been some discourse about art as a therapeutic tool rather than a form of norm subversion or coalition building. When soliciting submissions, I was not so concerned about the original intent behind the art, per say; I felt the motivation behind the art, as classified into traditional motivational and audience-facing categories, was a personal choice, far from a black-and-white binary. Solvang (2018) outlined the various classifications as art therapy (created by people with disabilities, a process aimed at improving well-being), outsider art (created by people with disabilities, a label emphasizing artists’ identities and practices as “outside” of normative culture and formal training spaces), disability art (created by and for people with disabilities), and disability aesthetics (created by people with disabilities to raise awareness and re-imagine what bodies can and should be represented in mainstream spaces). But even if a work begins as a form of art therapy, it does not necessarily reinforce curative rhetoric. Nor does work created by and for people with disabilities fail to resonate with non-disabled people. As a new artist myself, I understood that my own artistic process was sometimes therapeutic, sometimes communicative, sometimes educational and sometimes subversive. So, I welcomed art contributions from anyone in the university community who identified as disabled and/or neurodiverse.
This is where the pre-exhibition workshops came into play as an essential form of access. I recognized that the open call necessitated additional structures that could benefit new and seasoned artists, and especially artists who had never had access to disability arts before. It quickly became clear that contributors were drawn to the exhibition for various reasons. Some arrived with long histories of creating visual arts. Others, like me, were relative newcomers. Yet most had never combined disability and neurodiversity with art before. Thus, contributors were given the choice to opt in to an orientation and two additional workshops in the months leading up to the exhibition opening. Many of the contributors created their pieces primarily in response to the exhibition call, creating an interesting matrix of co-curation and co-creation as we worked through key exhibition design choices and evolving considerations throughout their artistic processes. The three workshops (one virtual, two hybrid) were oriented toward artistic access, community-building, project support, event co-ideation and feedback. Though each contributor created their piece individually, several projects evolved throughout the group sessions. During one of the workshops, I projected Access/VSA’s MERGE and Connected catalogs (The Kennedy Center, n.d.) and we scrolled through them as a full group, discussing several pieces that resonated with them and then moving into smaller groups.
Ellie Homant, a graduate student contributor, shared that the Idea Generation Workshop served as a space for affirming dialogue that solidified her final project, a calendar of chronic illness-related time management via a zine:
I had some reservations about my zine; I didn't want it to be like I'm complaining, you know. I didn't want it to seem whiny…Talking with [another contributor] was really helpful, because they were like, “Oh, you're just talking about your life.”
This exchange between two contributors—one practiced in disability advocacy, and one new to sharing openly about her chronic illness—illustrates another key role of the workshops: care.
Scholarship from disability studies and curation have emphasized care as a key form of access and curation. In describing “care webs,” Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018) proposes a shift in conceptions of access and care “from an individual chore, an unfortunate cost of having an unfortunate body, to a collective responsibility that's maybe even deeply joyful” (p. 33). Focusing more specifically on elements of crip curation as care, Cooley and Fox (2022) identify collaboration, intersectionality, and access as care. The workshop settings for Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity practiced collaboration as care, allowing contributors to imagine and shape their projects together, to affirm and encourage each other in what was, for many, their disability arts debut.
More than a year later, I am still amazed at the final form of the exhibition opening, which reflected a collective combination of ideas that stretched the bounds of individual imaginations and curatorial instincts. In part, I think our final, co-curated exhibition was so special because of the “access intimacy” that emerged from workshop conversations, which Mingus (2011) defines as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.” Cooley and Fox’s Ford Foundation Gallery exhibition Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning framed care as insistent upon access, of “insist[ing] there is beauty in the full range of human embodiment” (Dragoni, 2022). When I set out to recruit contributions for the exhibition back in 2023, I had a mental catalog of writings on curation but no prior curatorial experience myself. What I knew is that I wanted to center the artists’ stories in all aspects. As I continued to engage with contributors in these small group, workshop settings, access intimacy became baked into our interactions, a sometimes unspoken, sometimes acknowledged understanding that each person’s perspectives and experiences were not only valuable but essential pieces of the final product.
Reflecting on the care-based, community-oriented nature of the workshops, I am reminded of several of Sins Invalid’s 10 Principles of Disability Justice (Berne et al., 2018). In particular, cross-disability solidarity, recognizing wholeness, and collective access. Collective access has already been discussed, so here I focus on the other two principles. Many contributors did not share the same experience of disability and/or neurodiversity, but still, there was a sense of cross-disability solidarity. They self-identified with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), autism, chronic illness, Crohn’s disease, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), neurodivergence, and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). There was also an overarching sense of recognizing the wholeness of experiences shared, and it existed outside of normative notions of productivity. There were instances where people signed up to contribute—began working on their art and/or attended workshops—but did not end up completing and showcasing their art in the final event. I extended interview invitations for those still interested in a conversation about their art being included in this final write-up, an extension of valuing incomplete works as whole contributions to my understanding of disability arts, representation and (in)visibility. Process over product is care, access, and aesthetic in itself.
Before delving into contributors’ art, I want to highlight two more co-curated elements of the exhibition: the opening speaker selection and visitor engagement activities.
Masilela (2015) acknowledges the responsibility of community arts organizers to their communities, and he writes that “creating work is like holding a mirror up to the community” (as cited by Kuppers, 2019, p. 1). A university community, like many other communities, is very heterogeneous, comprised of students, staff and faculty with diverse backgrounds and lived experiences who share an affiliation with a school that serves as their source of education and/or employment. Initially, the task of identifying someone who could successfully hold up such a mirror felt daunting. But when I floated the idea of asking someone from the university community to offer brief opening remarks at the beginning of the exhibition’s opening, there was fast consensus around Erin Sember-Chase, who has devoted more than 20 years of her career to supporting students and employees with disabilities on campus.
Visitor engagement activities were similarly selected in collaboration with contributors and approved by my institution’s ethical review board (IRB). From speaking with faculty who have expertise in disability studies, consulting with colleagues who frequent art museums and attending exhibitions myself, I had a general sense of several activities that could capture visitor responses that might help me better understand disability arts curation as it related to representing invisible experiences and altering perceptions of disability. To this end, Kelly & Orsini’s (2021) critical review of museum visitor studies called for affective, creative and participation-based engagement of diverse audiences to spur social change through art, and I was interested in exploring different forms of creative participation from visitors in response to contributors’ art and the overall theme. It was important to me that visitors could leave some form of response to the exhibition and each of its pieces, allowing them to directly contribute to the curatorial narrative by leaving something of themselves behind, whether it be a one-word response to the art or a sticky note comment attached to a wall near the entrance where they could reflect on the exhibition and invisibility. I briefly considered an exit survey, which certainly would have yielded some responses to my questions about how engaging with art related to disability invisibility impacts visitor perceptions. But I really wanted to examine responses in more engaged mediums—that felt more like tangible co-curation of the event’s ultimate narrative. One contributor imagined visitors might identify as disabled and/or neurodiverse and suggested they should have an opportunity to affiliate that with their reflections on the event, so I tied optional disclosure into the final version of the sticky note wall, providing plain gold and silver star stickers that represented neurodiversity and disability respectively. And, to my delight, visitors used them. They left evidence.
Figure 1. The sticky note response wall (with handwriting removed to protect visitor anonymity). A clock with black numbers of various sizes on a green wall. Colorful sticky notes frame the bottom rim of the clock. Two of the sticky notes have one star stuck to them, and one sticky note has two stars stuck to it.
On her blog, Leaving Evidence, Mingus (n.d.) writes:
We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live--past survival; past isolation.
I consider the process of creating and exhibiting disability arts to be a form of leaving evidence. And after reviewing responses to visitor activities, I believe they also serve as a form of evidence too. Evidence of the perspectives validated or shifted, of the bodies and minds and conversations that existed in the exhibition space that April afternoon, surrounded by disability arts and the disabled and neurodiverse artists who created them.
Same with the one-word responses to the individual art pieces, which collectively formed word clouds distributed to artists post-exhibition. These, too, were evidence that people engaged with their stories of invisibility. From an acontextual word alone, it is difficult to interpret much from each individual response. It is difficult to know whether this was the first piece visitors engaged with or the last. Whether they conversed with the artist first or engaged in silence. Whether they read the artist statement or submitted their response first. Together, these individual words form their own narrative in response to the art, with enough overlap between the artists’ statements and the collective message it seems the visitors understood, at least in part, the message each artist aimed to deliver.
Figure 2. An example of a Mentimeter word cloud comprised of 7 visitor responses to Hilary Yarger’s fiber art piece. Visitors responded to the question: "In one word, what does this project make you think of?" The words included are “burnout,” “weariness,” “pervasive,” “fragile,” “chaos,” “beautifully complex,” and “textured.”
The third visitor engagement activity was proposed by a staff contributor who supplied magazines from her personal collection for a magazine collaging activity that generated high engagement from visitors. I was especially excited by this activity, which allowed visitors (and other contributors) to generate artistic responses to the exhibition and its theme. In recent years, curatorial literature has discussed creative possibilities for involving visitors in creative access efforts, and I would expand this call to allowing visitors to respond to art with art, too. Even these several-minute snippets of visitor and contributor perspectives yielded beautiful results, forming a real-time piece of collective art in collaboration with contributors and visitors alike. As with the one-word responses to individual pieces, these clusters of magazine cut-outs were endlessly interpretable, and I felt there was something powerful to their non-verbal narratives.
Figure 3. The communal magazine collage. A long table covered with a sheet of white paper decorated with clusters of magazine cut-outs.
The final visitor engagement activity was a music room where an exhibition-themed, contributor-curated playlist ran on a loop for the duration of the opening. Some art exhibitions include individual and collective art displays, but given logistical constraints on time and funding, I turned to alternative imaginings of tangible collaboration between contributors. Several months before the exhibition’s opening, I attended a campus exhibition on freedom of expression that offered visitors the opportunity to listen through a playlist of songs curated by the organizing team. I liked the idea of a collective creation that could be copied infinitely and transported home with each contributor and visitor when they left, and enough contributors opted in to the activity that it felt representative of our collective experiences of invisibility. Listening through contributors’ song selections felt like intimate access to their inner worlds in a way that was different from viewing their own artistic creations. It almost seemed more similar to reading the communal collage, listening to a playlist of individual works of aural art stitched together because of evocative responses from each contributor as they interpreted the exhibition theme. The playlist, too, became art in response to art, and it included the following songs:
“Me Attacking Me” by Haley Faye Rosenthal
“Shake It Out” by Florence + The Machine
“this is me trying” by Taylor Swift
“It's Ok” by Imagine Dragons
“OK Not To Be OK” by Marshmello and Demi Lovato
“idontwannabeyouanymore” by Billie Eilish
“Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode
“Over and Over and Over” by Jack White
“overwhelmed” by Royal & the Serpent
“Lonely” by Justin Bieber and benny blanco
“I Look in People's Windows” by Taylor Swift
“Disorder” by Mallavora
“Get Better” by Leslie Mosier
“Medical Mystery” by Porch Cat
“I Can't Feel” by Yours Truly
Erin Sember-Chase’s speech opened the exhibition with a nod to her own journey with disability and the decades that brought us to a higher education space that would be receptive to this advocacy work:
I was born with a hearing disability and craniofacial difference, and I went to school like all of you. Events like this simply didn’t happen when I was in college, so it’s very liberating for me personally to see this event and people with disabilities sharing their experiences and giving voice to their realities, especially through artistic mediums.
Today, many scholars and advocates work to improve the accessibility of higher education. But at its foundation, it wasn’t built for us—those with diverse minds and bodies. Dolmage (2017) has positioned disability as “the antithesis of higher education,” noting, “Academia powerfully mandates able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, as well as other forms of social and communicative hyperability, and this demand can best be defined as ableism” (p. 7). He examined the ableist architecture at the early foundation of many universities, extending the marginalization of disability through modern populations; with many students with disabilities struggling to complete their degrees on-time, and a notable lack of professors with disabilities in tenure-track roles in the academy, there remains a sizeable disparity (Dolmage, 2017).
Thus, given the relative few representatives from disabled and neurodiverse communities within higher education, who tells stories about disability and neurodiversity matters; a point Erin emphasized from the start of her keynote, which emphasized authentic representation:
Unfortunately, whether it’s through news, media, education systems—so often perceptions about identity, especially the disability identity, are formed based on depictions and information provided by people who don’t actually have that identity and disability. I don’t know about you all, but for me, not a week goes by when I don’t see either inaccurate or predominantly one-sided depictions and portrayals on TV shows, movies, or commercials of what the disability lived experience is like; when I read a news story that is about something that greatly involves or impacts people with disabilities, not a single person with disability’s perspective or expertise is included in that story or article. In order to truly understand what living with a disability, chronic health condition, or neurodivergency and trying to navigate a society that was not designed for us is like, I believe strongly we need to find out directly from those who experience it.
Figure 4. A cluster from the communal art collage with cut-outs that are positioned to say: "IT'S TIME FOR OUR PERSPECTIVE ON THE WORLD" and "LOOKS DIFFERENT. FEELS DIFFERENT."
Historically, disabled people have not contributed to their representations in popular media, which has generated and perpetuated inaccurate stereotypes. Ellcessor and Kirkpatrick (2017) and Sandahl (2018) both discuss this in terms of casting. Sandahl (2018) frames authenticity as casting disabled people to play disabled characters. For this exhibition, I defined it similarly, with authentic representations of disability and neurodiversity stemming from art created by someone with direct, personal experiences. In contrast with many of the media representations Erin referenced, the art in this exhibition was incredibly local. It was rooted in self-expression, and there was an underpinning aesthetic that started to form distinctions between the art in the exhibit and the broader landscape of representation. Individual artistic expressions can collaboratively generate a curatorial narrative that spotlights diverse experiences of disability and neurodiversity, creating a powerful moment in, with and for the local community.
Still, in reflecting on typical media representations of disability, numerous contributors identified a range of inaccurate messaging that comes from outside of their communities. David perceived “people think that having a disability means inability,” and staff contributor Alison Fromme noted the related harms of Western culture’s emphasis on productivity. Numerous contributors described common misconceptions of neurodiversity. Staff contributor Hilary Anne Yarger noted misconceptions of homogenous experiences could stem from diagnoses and labels, adding, “One major misconception is that neurodiversity might be kind of similar in some way or very defined. I personally think that the entire concept of neurodiversity is so broad and encompasses so many things that I almost hesitate to even label myself.” Staff contributor Ashlee Cherry affirmed Hilary’s sentiments, attributing the lack of perceived individuality as a “lack of understanding that one disability or neurotype might present differently in a whole bunch of different people with that same diagnosis.” More broadly, student contributor M. noted in his artist statement that “stereotypical depictions of neurodiversity and autism have tended to treat them childishly, simplistically, or demonized them.”
Kit felt inspired by the exhibition call, interpreting it as an opportunity “to not only create a work, but see other people's work that they created, as we're not a monolith. Everybody has different experiences.” Echoing Kit’s excitement, as I watched projects develop throughout the months leading up to the exhibition, I was struck by the many ways symbols could be taken up and reimagined. How different each piece became, even when two began with a similar topic or element. Every commonality gave way to differences, courtesy of the art, the artists, and the visitors. And that emphasis on individuality—that resistance to mainstream and external narratives of homogeny—made way for the complexity and artistic elevation of taken-for-granted or even curative symbols for communicating the invisible. Through their art, contributors challenged these misconceptions and others, unpacking the complex dynamics of in/visibility in their physical movement through space, social interactions, and the media landscape.
The task of centering invisible and misunderstood experiences requires a certain form of subversion disability aesthetics are uniquely situated to achieve. Nine contributors set out to create art that captured these experiences, and seven consented to the inclusion of photos of their art in this article. Not pictured are a sound-based project and a collaged plaster mask. In highlighting disability and neurodiversity from the perspectives of people directly experiencing them, conversations emerged between art pieces as well as visitor responses to the communal collage, a selection of which are shared as they fit into these dialogues.
Beyond accessibility considerations for spatial layout (e.g., having additional seating near the more interactive pieces) and weighing natural flows of space arrangement, I spent time arranging and rearranging the pieces based on common threads, placing pieces related to masking and nature in clusters. I later realized those related most to norm subversion through representation were the four nature pieces, with one piece overlapping between masking and nature but connecting the two groups in the physical space. Due to the interactive form of the fourth nature-related piece, I was unable to position all four together in the exhibition space. Thinking back, I wonder if I missed its connection to the others altogether, despite its obviousness in hindsight, and whether I would have changed its location if I had made the connection sooner.
Regardless, as suggested by Siebers’ (2006) concept of disability aesthetic, there is a need to center rather than discard difference, to re-define aesthetics of beauty rather than conform. I learned from Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity the importance of generating disability representations that challenge norms around seemingly indisputable concepts like “nature,” a concept that nearly half of the pieces interfaced with. The physical iterations of this theme included plastic flowers and branches and dozens of rocks, while the more figurative imagery came in the forms of color and subverting a common household item.
Hilary returned to her lifelong art form—knitting—to create a juxtaposition between her past and present self, using her textile art to embody her exhaustion at the end of each day through draping and color. She selected the final pattern because “the colors were varied, but kind of muted. It looked like what I thought of as a garden, but one that had gone past its prime…more like a decaying garden. This feeling of a garden that's tired.” Her dual personification of nature and textile gives the yarn body language, disrupting common conceptions of the more natural forms a self-portrait can take. While many feature a recognizable image of the artist, Hilary’s challenges the natural human form itself to represent the invisible.
Figure 5. A knitted self-portrait comprised of colorful yarn that is bunched at various points and draped over the side of a board. It represents Hilary Yarger's exhaustion from disability-related masking and perfectionism. Photos by Karina Song.
Figure 6. A magazine cut-out cluster from the communal art collage of a little girl's silhouette beside a floral cake and an image of wolves. Below, a cut-out reads: "I'm ready to question:"
Meanwhile, Alison used a blue tablecloth representing water to complete a rearrangeable rock display, which subverted the typical image of an inanimate rock through personification. Alison explained her choice of nature element and its accompanying poem, which was inspired by the Joyce Carol Oates poem, “This Is Not a Poem:”
You can imbue [rocks] with all kinds of symbolism. They're all around us, and they're easy to ignore. They're just so multifaceted. And I am a science person, so I think about how they're formed, and how old they are, and stuff like that…I have this Joyce Carol Oates poem tacked up in my office, and it sort of makes me ask, “what is a poem, anyways?” She mentions all these cliches that I really like; one of the cliches in her poem is when the poet stumbles on weathered bones and contemplates their own mortality. So, it's kind of like a joke. I mean, these [rocks] are universal symbols, and yet they can get tired. And so, I'm kind of making fun of myself in the [accompanying poem], like is it cheesy to have this rock be this symbolic thing? I don't know, but I feel like to me, it sort of opens up the possibility of flexibility, thinking, “Well, [chronic illness] is a really serious thing, but it doesn't always have to be.”
Alison’s art reminds me of Kuppers (2011), who, in her community work, explores the use of local myths to create habitable spaces. Alison’s choice to generate an accompanying poem based on one very familiar to her could similarly be interpreted as creation of a habitable space. Kuppers (2011) further connects through its conception of a “rhizomatic” model of disability, a nature metaphor that emphasizes connection and fluidity inspired by the rhizome plant stem’s continuous re-assembly into new forms. Alison’s creation of a rearrangeable rock display mirrors this rhizomatic model, inviting each visitor to rearrange the rocks alongside their own conceptions of disability.
Figure 7. A cloth-covered box filled with a layer of gravel-sized rocks, with 13 larger rocks piled on top. Some of the larger rocks are covered with stripes of neon green and dark purple tissue paper glued flat to the surface of the rocks. One flat rock features a poem, pasted on with lime green paper. The overall sculpture represents Alison Fromme’s discomfort with her diagnosis and disability, inviting exhibition visitors to re-arrange the sculpture alongside their own conceptions of disability. Photo by Karina Song.
Figure 8. A cluster of magazine-cut outs from the communal art collage that are positioned to say: "A TWIST ON TRADITION Exquisitely Exemplified.”
Continuing the dialogue between disability representation and nature subversion, my own art contribution incorporated physical nature elements into the decoration of fashion lanterns to push back against narratives of disability as something “ugly” or “unnatural.” Ironic, considering I filled the lanterns with sketches like those typically found in the fashion industry, which includes many of the tastemakers who determine what beauty aesthetics will become for that season. Doubly ironic when considering the nature elements that I incorporated into the lanterns were fake, which could be interpreted as a critique of the legitimacy of beauty standards or a questioning of the naturalness of nature, itself. My sketches represent disability as inextricable from nature, entangled within its branches, petals and leaves.
Figure 9. A series of fashion sketches that capture intersections of my disability, gender and race, set in a lantern decorated with deconstructed and reconstructed nature elements. Sketch 1: "I AM NOT YOUR SUPERHERO" depicts a female figure wearing a cape atop a clock-themed shirt and shorts held up by a spoon-shaped belt. She is surrounded by dark flowers and tree branches. Sketch 2: "I AM NOT INVISIBLE" depicts a female figure wearing a yellow dress covered in green, brown and blue eyes. She is surrounded by googly-eye question marks and flowers with plastic eyes in their centers. Sketch 3: "I AM NOT UNRAVELING" depicts a female figure wearing a reimagined hanfu dress with Chinese-style water symbols. She is surrounded by blue plants and a starfish in netting. Sketch 4: "I AM NOT HIS INTERPRETATION" depicts a female figure wearing a dress with a pair of lips above a female gender symbol and an upside-down bucket of popcorn. Below the popcorn is the phrase "YOU MUST NOT EAT.” She is surrounded by cascading petals and bedazzled flowers. Photos by Karina Song.
Kate shared my subversive goal when creating their pill bottle chandelier from their own recycled medicine bottles. For Kate, it was important to challenge ideas of normalcy and domesticity, such as those embodied in a traditional chandelier, by calling to question the very definition of “natural” in medicine and alternative healthcare systems:
As a person with chronic pain, I would love to have less pain. I understand that perspective. But I also really believe in the fact that people have always been disabled, and we will always be disabled, and I think that any narrative that just accepts cure as the ideal is actually unnatural, because it’s driving toward this idea of perfection that we don't see in nature. In nature, having these differences is what keeps species alive.
Kate continued to share that though they had created the chandelier for them, they also hoped others who were disabled and chronically ill would resonate with their subversion of society’s expectations of what is “natural”:
I kind of want them to laugh, I guess, like it’s ironically sad this is a part of our culture and how we exist in the world. We're encouraged to hide, right? Like your drugs. You're supposed to keep them in the cabinet, and nobody notices. You're supposed to hide that you're sick, and it's supposed to be invisible. So, what does it mean to hang them up as decoration, like, “Here's the evidence of my failings and the failings quote of my body.” … We're told that [pill bottles] are ugly, or a sign of ugliness, or something wrong. So, I think it was fun to make them into something that's supposed to be pretty and decorative.
Kate’s critiques of naturalness are reminiscent of Clare’s (2017) writing on the violence of cure. Clare’s essays call attention to the many paradoxes of the medical system’s relationship with disabled body-minds (for more on bodyminds, read Price, 2015), highlighting the power of diagnosis and labels toward essential care or social stigma. The reading of narratives onto a disabled person’s body because of narrow interpretation of assistive technology and its users.
Figure 10. Kate Keresztes’ pill bottle chandelier, which challenges assumptions about normalcy, medicalization and (in)visible disability by replacing lightbulbs with pill bottles. Empty pill bottles cascade down the chandelier's chain, sit inside the lightbulb slots, and hang from the bottom of the chandelier. Photos by Karina Song.
Both Kate and Alison perceived aspects of their submissions’ messages as somewhat humorous, subverting the idea that disability has to be mutually exclusive from levity. But an important component of destigmatizing disability is normalizing it across contexts, including humor. Kate mentioned how uncomfortable able-bodied people tend to be with the very topic of disability. Using “crip humor” to acknowledge disability’s challenges alongside its joys is one strategy for connecting community and improving awareness (Albrecht, 1999).
From these four pieces, disability representation can be understood as a commitment to the disability aesthetics that question normalcy and naturalness, answering my question of how disability representation can contend with media representations generated without consulting disabled and neurodiverse people.
The other question remains, raised by the exhibition’s overarching theme: What of invisibility? What aspects of disability and neurodiversity do contributors consider invisible to others?
Though the combination of my experiences of in/visibility as a Chinese-Italian American woman with Crohn’s Disease is unique, other aspects of my experience are not. Samuels (2003) provides a framework of disclosure, or “coming out,” that extends the practice beyond sexuality to invisible disability and race. Just as those of us who are mixed-race but white passing must disclose our heritage to circumvent assumptions from others, so too must those of us who are invisibly disabled disclose our disabilities when we want to communicate accommodations needs, reveal important aspects of our identities, or show solidarity with disability communities.
Kattari et al. (2018) point out that people with invisible disabilities are more subject to ableist microaggressions and (in)voluntary educational conversations when interacting with those without disabilities, but there is also often a shared desire to educate the world at large to create one more accepting and accessible. As with education more broadly, there are numerous ways to achieve this goal, and a common one is verbal disclosure; however, Samuels (2003) lists several examples of somewhat awkward verbal disclosures, noting that: “In the absence of recognized nonverbal signs, we often resort to the ‘less dignified’ response of claiming identity through speech.”
Two decades after Samuels (2003), visual symbols like the hidden disabilities sunflower and the rainbow infinity loop have begun to crop up, but there is still more work to be done toward communications of disability that engage different senses (e.g., visual, audible, tactile) and showcase personal symbols in creative forms beyond spontaneous disclosures to strangers. Even universally recognized signs of disability, like the wheelchair, often fail to capture many complex and invisible aspects of disability, whether made visible through assistive technology or rendered invisible without. However, without community and disclosure, these often unspoken aspects of disability can feel isolating; I’ve often found myself wondering what remains unsaid, by myself and others.
Ellie and I share a general IBD diagnosis, and it was surprising to learn about our similar and divergent experiences through her zine, which provided an overview of a week-in-the-life of managing IBD. Broadly, she perceived a level of societal discomfort with chronic illness and its association with mortality and lack of control, which factored into her explicit choices to make her week-in-the-life zine very digestible for people with and without chronic illnesses. Between daily management processes, like carefully monitoring her diet, and juggling medications, doctor’s appointments and flare-ups, Ellie felt a calendar would be the best way to communicate her invisible experiences of chronic illness:
I live and die by my Google Calendar and my planner. That is how I like to operate. And so that made the most logical sense to me. It helped me sort out what I wanted to put on the pages. I ended up using that kind of hourly planner format because I just felt like that would be the clearest thing for me to do. For myself, but also, I felt like it would be clearer for readers as well.
Ellie’s project unpacked various aspects of crip time, acknowledging her alternate flows of time as someone with a chronic illness. The experiences she shared map onto several of Samuels’ (2020) crip time lenses, including sick time and broken time, which can occur when institutional standards of time conflict with body-instituted breaks. In particular, Ellie’s zine touched many of the visitors and other contributors, which was especially poignant given that so many of her colleagues were in attendance. She shared:
I had some folks come up to me afterwards and be like, ‘Thank you for sharing your experience.’ And that they really enjoyed reading the zine. Or ‘that was really, really awesome.’ And that is what I was hoping…This is not something that I talk about often, but it's something that I want people to know about me. So, I was particularly excited for my friends, and some of the faculty that were there, to read it and get a different perspective on who I am, outside of what they see at work.
After the event, I kept speculating about the elements of Ellie’s zine that succeeded in making her story incredibly compelling, the elements that made her communication of invisible experiences so impactful to many. Perhaps it was because we mutually knew many of the same visitors, who made similar remarks to me about her art. But it was more than people she already knew learning more about her; it was also other contributors and visitors who had not met her outside of the exhibition context commenting on the relatability and influence of her zine. As she anticipated, the Google Calendar format was highly recognizable, especially to an audience from a higher education setting, and I noticed people sitting by the table full of copies of her zine throughout the opening event, poring over every word. I decided her use of a zine for peeling back the invisible process of keeping her chronic illness invisible was a fitting match between medium and message, striking a balance that resonated broadly.
Figure 11. A zine entitled “Crip Week” with a subtitle of “time + chronic illness” that outlines a calendar of chronic illness-related time management, representing a week in Ellie Homant's life, signed "by Ellie" at the bottom. Photo by Karina Song.
Like Ellie’s busy calendar, staff contributor Andria Aurrell’s collaged books offered an interactive window into her busy mind, generating a tangible representation of ADHD. Fox (2020) details how the arts might expand imaginations of anatomies, and Andria’s work similarly expands imaginaries of the mind.
Figure 12. A collection of colorful books with collaged pages, bound with patterned and textured ribbons. They stack to form a tangible representation of Andria Aurrell’s ever-busy brain. Photos by Karina Song.
A similar pulling back of the curtain to the mind is revealed through M.’s drawing of a figure taking off a mask to reveal a teleprompter that sustains the neurodivergent masking process. In representations of invisibility, masking was present in various forms—as a symbol, an artifact, and a medical device. M. wrote in his artist statement:
Widespread negative stigma produces immense pressure among autistic people in particular to ‘mask,’ e.g., avoiding stimming, forcing eye contact, micromanaging tone of voice and body posture, and carefully choosing language in an effort to appear ‘normal.’ The external ‘façade’ of masking is represented literally as a face mask with attentive eyes, while the internal thought processes that sustain it are portrayed as an elaborate ‘teleprompter’ contraption that is fixed to the figure’s head—one of his own design and construction…Masking is extremely exhausting, however, and can become overwhelming to the point of burnout.
Figure 13. A drawing by M. that highlights the burnout that comes with masking through an attentive mask the figure wears externally and a teleprompter that represents the internal thought processes that sustain masking. The figure sits at a desk covered with masking-related drawings and tools like wiring and a tape measure. His eyes are closed. His head rests against one of his hands, his fingers grazing the bottom of a teleprompter that sits atop his head, and his other hand removes a mask that has its eyes fixed wide open in an attentive expression. Photo by Karina Song.
Ashlee’s art—a plaster mask of her own face that she covered in collaged words—also centers masking. But she interpreted “masking” itself as a much broader term that could also be applied beyond neurodivergent communities:
I think literally everyone masks to some degree. We all mask something. Even if it's not disability or neurodiversity, we might mask emotions throughout the day or try to be perceived in a certain way by other people…Once you take a step back and really think about what masking is, it's really just trying to control your own narrative and how you're perceived by other people.
To Ashlee’s point, a survey of self-identified autistic and neurotypical people found some similarities between their masking practices (Miller et al., 2021). While general masking is not exclusive to neurodivergent communities, and can broadly lead to exhaustion, neurodivergent people may experience additional sensory suppression and other outcomes. Drawing on convergent and divergent experiences of masking to represent OCD and ADHD through her project, Ashlee hoped to connect with others by providing:
A really intimate look at the “why” and the “what” behind masking. Why we do it. If you look at [the outside] of the mask, you'll see words like ‘professional’ and “successful.” Those [are] what we want other people to see, or what I have traditionally wanted other people to see. But then there's also words like “fraud,” because you are putting up this fraudulent front and hiding so much of yourself. And then, if you look at the inside, it really takes a deeper look at what I feel like I need to hide, or what I have been hiding. So, there's words like “pain,” “anxiety,” “emotional.” But there are also things like “creativity.” Looking at the “why” and the “what” behind masking, and how all those different words play with one another and work together.
Figure 14. A cluster of magazine cut-outs from the communal art collage that are positioned to say: SEARCH FOR vision, vitality. Below that, it says "Cultivating Perfection" with trigger diagonally beside the phrase.
Like Ashlee, David had planned to use a physical mask to communicate about his experiences to those who are unfamiliar. Except his would take the form of mask commonly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and instead of neurodiversity, it would represent respiratory disability. He explained: “One thing that a lot of people have experienced in recent years is wearing a mask, which is something that I do a lot indoors, and also while [outdoors], because my heart and lungs do not work quite so well.”
Though David’s project was only partially complete by the time the exhibition opened, he plans to continue the project, which involves wearing his mask outside to capture the invisible air particles that make him sick. He continued:
Pollution in the air—stuck to the front of the mask, as I breathe—is being filtered out by my white mask and left in a visible way on the [outside]. And so, the idea for the artwork is to basically mount the mask, or masks, to a standard frame…Due to some horrible tragedies we've faced together, people have some sense of what it's like to know that there are invisible airborne things surrounding them that do affect their health. And so, I will be doing some work to try to help that be a bridge for people to think about what the experience of asthma and related disabilities might be in our community.
Kit, who also ran out of time to complete his project, planned to ground his art in the symbolism of a cracking face. While not a mask, per say, I found it interesting how much focus was given to the face and mind across these projects and felt his project’s conception contributed to this dialogue around representations of the face. Kit shared:
I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder when I was 12, and that's always been something that's impacted my life…After my aunt passed away, the combination of grief with depression became explosive. So, there was a piece that I made that was marker and pen. I did this drawing, and it was of a kind of demonic figure where its face is cracking, and that’s how I felt in that moment, with this grief meeting depression. And so, I wanted to recreate that, because I was like, “This is representative of how I felt in my worst moments.” There were some signs that I wasn't doing well, but it was that kind of invisible aspect, right? Depression is not something that people really see, so I wanted to redo that as a self-portrait in paint.
Across Andria, M., Ashlee, David and Kit’s projects—and even Hilary’s, the knitted art representing exhaustion from masking—there is a sense of fascination with minds, faces and masking, often glimpsing inside physical anatomies that are invisible to others in the day-to-day to reveal invisible experiences. Perhaps, then, to reveal invisible disability through art is to subvert the bounds of human anatomy.
For anyone considering putting on an event like this—or anyone who feels the tug of inspiration after reading this article—I hope you do it. I’ve never had my art publicly exhibited, and I’ve certainly never had the opportunity to organize an exhibition prior to this event. But creating a space that showcased voices from within our local community turned out to be incredibly powerful, and more campuses and communities would benefit from highlighting these much-needed messages. From personal experience, disability without community can feel lonely; and if I had access to community like this during the initial years after my diagnosis, I think I would’ve come to accept and celebrate my disability much sooner. Every disability journey is different, and each one runs on its own timeline; we’ve long known this from crip time (Kafer, 2013) and other lived experiences. Yet there’s something special about the communal co-creation, co-curation, and co-celebration that occurs in locally curated exhibitions of difference.
My first recommendation for disability arts curators is to find ways to weave aesthetics of access, care and justice into your process—early. Access, as I have come to consider it through a curatorial lens, can be as broad as geographic accessibility to an exhibition space and as specific as a designated sensory break area designed to meet contributor and visitor access needs. With more time, I would have created an audio tour, and with funding, I would have explored options for hiring an ASL interpreter. With more reflection, I would have invited the not-yet-complete works to showcase their in-progress works when they let me know they wouldn’t finish in time for the opening. Though they may have still opted to withdraw, there would have been immense value for visitors to witness disability arts in motion, and the curatorial decision would have opened up more dialogue about process in addition to product as an aesthetic.
In the rush of the final stretch toward the exhibition, I wish I would have listened more closely to the voice in the back of my mind that would intermittently nudge me to provide contributors—some of whom debuted at the exhibition—with additional guidance for the opening of the exhibition (which would have been an open-ended, choose-your-own-adventure type note). Though each ultimately decided for themselves whether to remain stationed by their art or move around the space to engage with visitor activities or other contributors’ works, a contributor noted in her post-exhibition interview that it would have been helpful to receive explicit guidance, even if it was open-ended. Though much of the feedback was positive, I was disappointed that after such a long, careful process of introducing contributors to disability arts, I had missed such a detail in the home stretch.
Similarly, I had a very rough outline of how I wanted to introduce the exhibition and Erin’s opening speech, but I found myself so worried about perfecting the other elements of the opening that I neglected to include a mention of the long, workshop and feedback-filled process leading up to the exhibition. I knew I would aim to publish a write-up of the process and event, but it wasn’t until someone commented that a contributor mentioned extensive outreach prior to the exhibition that I realized my omission. Thankfully, I had my list of acknowledgements ready to go in advance, but I recommend drafting the full statement before last-minute logistics can overshadow important milestones in the final preparations.
My second recommendation to curators is to ask questions of communities and contributors—and to listen actively for the possibility in their answers. I was fortunate to experience dialogue with contributors and others at the university throughout the planning process, and the final exhibition was much stronger for it. The earliest draft of the theme was Invisible Disability, which became Invisible Aspects of Disability after guidance from a mentor who invited me to reflect too on visible but misunderstood experiences of disability. It next became Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity after I received a note asking why the title implied neurodiversity was included as part of disability instead of being separated for those who identify with one but not the other. And many other components of the exhibition—from the point-of-view of the artist statements through the visitor activities—were shaped for the better because of this open conversation and negotiation of many elements.
The same was true during the exhibition’s opening, where I searched for additional opportunities for co-curation, an expansive process that involved generating opportunities for artistic responses to art, cross-disability identification and connection, and unanticipated dialogue between art, both complete and in-progress. To understand how the various human and non-human elements of curatorial narratives take shape, every contributor, visitor, and organizer needs to be given opportunities to imagine and create. In conversation with the other elements, the nine art contributions form preliminary answers to my larger-scale questions about disability representation and invisibility, answers I suspect could manifest quite differently from a different group of contributors on a different campus but excite me nonetheless as I consider the applied mechanisms of disability theory and community dialogue.
My third recommendation is to strike a reflexive balance between your perspective and your contributors, during the curation process as well as the final write-up, whatever form it may take. From reading others’ reflections in methods handbooks and essays, I know I am not alone in feeling highly self-conscious about the space I may take up, yet I consistently noticed myself trying to self-erase from in-person spaces and Word docs to try and maximize room for contributors. Even as I drafted this article, I worried my interests and priorities might overshadow theirs, and it took several drafts to grant myself permission to offer my own interpretations as the author of this article. During the organizational process, I wasn’t sure if I should contribute art, even when it became apparent there was plenty of space in the final contributor count for everyone who had been part of the several-month journey and wanted to showcase their work. But in corresponding with mentors, and reflecting on the goals of the exhibition, I realized I was about to miss an opportunity to demonstrate my support alongside everyone who had poured so much of themselves into their pieces, ready to share their stories with peers, colleagues, mentors and loved ones. The act of contributing art, I came to understand, was a key milestone for co-curating the final narrative, side-by-side and at all stages. As you consider your role as an artist, a curator, and a writer, I encourage you to find ways to center contributors’ art and perspectives without erasing yourself. I am still searching for that balance, and I believe I will refine it over time.
My fourth set of recommendations is less unified than the others, capturing miscellaneous pieces of advice I hope to leave with readers as I conclude. Curators: consider how to reveal process as you showcase the final product, or maybe even instead of the product. Artists and curators: consider how you can responsibly hold up a mirror to your communities, and what that means to you and those around you. Artists, visitors, and curators: consider who is in the room—and who isn’t. What can you do to increase access to disability and neurodiversity arts? What choices can you make? Who can you invite?
I feel immense gratitude to the people who shared their stories in Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity, as well as the colleagues, friends, and family who rallied to support them. I am thankful to Erin Sember-Chase for her impactful keynote, and to everyone who gathered there worked together to co-create a space that was filled with celebration and education and advocacy all wrapped in one. I often think back to those early questions: Whose stories are being told? Who is telling them? And how?
At that April exhibition, our community’s stories were being told. And we were telling them through art. That event was so special, in part, because of its scarceness; we can’t spend every day in a safe space, gathered among beautiful art and sharing our joys and challenges with community. But I hope everyone at the event—and everyone reading—can glean hope and strength as we continue working to build a more inclusive future.
To end on a quote from Kate, who so eloquently captured the heart of our community efforts that April afternoon: “So much of [disability advocacy] work is about survival…about making it the next day, about trying to make it possible for others to make it, too. And when it comes to disability studies, the part that excites me is the part in which we are the ones making culture. We're the ones making the future. We can thrive and be okay, not despite our disabilities, but with them as a part of us, and in some ways, even because of them.”
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I would like to thank the artists who contributed to the exhibition. I would also like to thank Kelli Carr, Joanna Alario, Vico Vecchiotti, Erin Sember-Chase, Karina Song, Maggie Foster, Julianna Raimonda, the Cornell New Media & Society Working Group and the Cornell Department of Communication for their help in putting on the exhibition. Lastly, I want to thank Lee Humphreys and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on the manuscript.