MONSTRO: Artworks Inspired by the Disabled Experience

Abstract

My ability (or, inability) to come to terms with the disabled experience-- forms the core of my artistic practice. I create semi-autobiographical sculptures that serve as allegory for the effects, symptoms, or experiences caused by my impairment. Through my work I scrutinize how my disability defines, limits, empowers, or differentiates me from my abled counterparts. Fueled by a rejection of society’s current perception of impairment as a negative or inferior variation of human existence, my work instead illustrates how living with a disability is inherently non-binary -- that the disabled experience is at once both positive and negative, biological and social, personal and political. I make artwork about my disability because I believe that those living with a disability are no better, nor any worse than their able-bodied counterparts--that the word disability only means different.