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A grayscale photograph of a figure standing against a wall with the word “Gallery” above her head. Facing the camera, she holds a cardboard sign that reads “Artist will work for axcess,” spelled A-X-C-E-S-S.

Laura Aguilar, Will Work For #4, 1993. Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund

Introduction

Variance

Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability
February 1 - October 9, 2022

Made between 1735 and 2021, these works ask us to consider how disability and illness are embodied and experienced, and how they have been represented by artists and deployed as visual tropes. These works foreground the ways that culture and art are shaped by physical, mental, and sensory differences that exist on the continuum of human variation. From moralizing, stereotypical historical representations of disability to more prideful modern and contemporary works, this exhibition highlights how disability is made, unmade, and remade towards new ends.

While not the only way to consider to this subject, Variance understands disability through the social model of disability, an approach first developed in the UK in the 1960s. In this framing, disability is not centered on defect and cure. Rather, disability is a social phenomenon in which people with some forms of difference experience oppression, stigmatization, or failure to be accommodated within the larger cultural sphere, while others are given priority. In this spirit, Variance aspires to help reveal what might be gained by welcoming a broader range of difference.

Not all these works are made by artists who identify as having a disability or illness. Sometimes the disability or illness is visible within the work itself, and other times it was part of the making or the artist’s life narrative. Variance invites you to consider what is gained, generated, or open to imagination by embracing disability as a critical framework through which to experience the world. We are, after all, incredibly varied in normative and sometimes extraordinary ways.

Conor Moynihan
Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
and former Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow
RISD Museum

RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.

Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability is also made possible by the Mellon Foundation.

While this is the first time a RISD Museum curator has organized an exhibition around the theme of disability and illness, the museum has collaborated with Arts Equity, through programming and teaching from the collection, for more than 30 years. We would also like to acknowledge other arts-centric disability organizations doing important work across Rhode Island either publicly, privately, or in combination. While not a complete list, some of these organizations include:

Arts Equity (previously Very Special Arts [VSA] Rhode Island) Cove Artist Collective Edge and End Flying Shuttles
HeARTspot Art Center Little Clay Studio Looking Upwards Downtown Designs Oasis Center Out of the Box Studio &
Gallery Outsider Collective Top Drawer TSETSE Initiative United Cerebral Palsy [UCP] Adaptive Arts Program

For a complete checklist, email curatorial@risd.edu.

Events

Talks and Conversations

Faculty Exhibition Overview: Variance

Museum Galleries
March 23, 2022 / 12-1 pm
Workshops and studios Hands-on Art

Hands-On Art: Making Medical Material - Filled to capacity

Museum Galleries
July 14, 2022 / 4:30-6:30 pm
Talks and Conversations

Artist Roundtable: Through the Lens of Disability and Chronic Illness

Virtual via Zoom
September 22, 2022 / 7-8:30 pm
Performances and Screenings

Open Rehearsal: Abilities Dance Boston

Museum Galleries and Metcalf Auditorium
October 1, 2022 / 2-3 pm

More Events

Projects & Publications

Publications

Manual / Issue 17

Variance
Read Online

Selected Objects

Thomas Sgouros

Remembered Landscape 14 • VIII • 96, August 14, 1996

Aaron Siskind

Man in Mirror with Crutch, 1940

Paul Strand

Blind Woman, New York, 1916

Marion Post Wolcott

Carnival Sign at Strawberry Festival, Plant City, Florida, 1939, printed 1981

Michael Mazur

Figure on a Bed, 1962-1965

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, etcher

Un Enano (A Dwarf) / El Primo, 1778

William Hogarth

Plate 8 (Tom Rakewell Ends Up in the Bethlehem Hospital Madhouse), 1735

Edvard Munch, designer

The Sick Girl: The Artist's Sister, 1896

Michael Mazur, designer

The Corridor, 1965

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Sur la Scène (Yvette Guilbert on Stage), 1898

Jack Levine, designer

Venetian Lady, 1964

Michael Mazur, designer

The Occupant, 1965

Peter Winslow Milton

Daylilies, 1974

Ross Bleckner

Antibody Diversity, 1999

Salvatore Mancini

Ladd School (Woman Holding Young Girl), 1984

Salvatore Mancini

Ladd School, 1984

Garry Winogrand

New York City, 1968

Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers

Tattoo Back Brace, 2008

David Wojnarowicz

Democracy at Work, 1989 - 1991

Vincent Gagliostro

Enjoy AZT (ACT UP), 1989 - 1991

Larry Silver

Polio Camp, Upstate New York, 1952 (printed later)

Johann Garber

Eine Kirche (A Church), 1984

Mirit Cohen

Untitled, ca. 1970s

Bill Jacobson

Song of Sentient Beings #1114, 1994

Marlon Mullen

Untitled, 2015

Laura Aguilar

Will Work For #4, 1993

Masami Teraoka

Artist and Canvas, 1987

Masami Teraoka

Condom Pillow Book, 1987

Masami Teraoka

Geisha and the Geijin, 1987

Masami Teraoka

Woman at Balcony, 1987

Robert Andy Coombs

Cuddle on Couch, 2019

Phoebe Boswell

Zoom [But, Mars], 2021
No Image Available

Forest Kelley

Untitled, 2013
No Image Available

Joan Giroux

Ellen “Ellie” Mae dob December 31, 1922, 2019
No Image Available

Joan Giroux

Ellen “Ellie” Mae dod May 6, 2008, 2019

More objects +

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