Artist Roundtable
About
The exhibition, Variance:
Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability, considers
how disability and illness are embodied and experienced, and how they have been
represented by artists and deployed as visual tropes. In this program, artists
Robert Andy Coombs, Riva Lehrer, and Dominic Quagliozzi discuss their work on
view and the intersections between their artist practice and disability culture
and experience. Moderated by Conor Moynihan, Assistant Curator, Prints,
Drawings & Photographs. This program is presented with Brown University’s Cogut Institute for the Humanities.
Free. Registration required. An email with a Zoom link for the program will
be sent to registrants.
Robert Andy
Coombs grew
up in Michigan's majestic Upper Peninsula where he spent his childhood roaming
the great outdoors. He started photographing his walkabouts in middle school
and moved on to portraiture in high school. Coombs received a scholarship to
Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids Michigan. During his third
year in undergrad, Coombs' sustained a spinal cord injury due to a gymnastics
training accident. After a year of recovery, he returned to KCAD and received
his BFA in photography in 2013. Coombs' photography explores the intersections
of disability and sexuality. Themes of relationships, caregiving, fetish, and
sex are depicted and explored throughout. Coombs graduated from the Yale School
of Art amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently residing in sunny Miami
Florida.