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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. Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund

Variance

Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability
February 1 - October 9, 2022
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. Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund

Introduction

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.

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Events

  • Performances and Screenings

Open Rehearsal

Abilities Dance Boston
October 1, 2022 / 2-3 pm
  • Talks and Conversations

Artist Roundtable

Through the Lens of Disability and Chronic Illness
September 22, 2022 / 7-8:30 pm
A black, curved abstract shape lies at the center of a piece of wrinkled tissue paper. Zig-zagging lines of thread intersect over and beyond the shape.
  • Workshops and studios /
  • Hands-on Art

Hands-On Art

Making Medical Material
July 14, 2022 / 4:30-6:30 pm
  • Talks and Conversations

Faculty Exhibition Overview

Variance
March 23, 2022 / 12-1 pm

upcoming exhibition

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

Publications

  • Journal

Manual / Issue 17: Variance

The human variations that we think of as disabilities in the broadest sense occur in every life and family and are a theme in all art and culture. Because these variances endure in human lived experience, we’ve recorded them as a set of stories that we receive, make, and remake over time and across place throughout human history. We might say that disability itself is a story, a record written on the body of flesh encountering world. Disability is a material phenomenon, but it is also a narrative occasion.

Articles

The Rejection of Closure

Curatorial intern Grace Xiao reflects on viewing artwork that embraces instability, disruption, and restlessness, making room for open interpretations in the gallery.

Alt Text and Accessibility: Describing the Act of Looking

How do we describe images and the experience of looking at images? Student Grace Xiao reflects on the process of writing alt text for "Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability."

Videos

Video

Artist Roundtable

Related Objects

Lithograph depicting the side profile of Edvard Munch’s sick sister. Her head rests on what appears to be a pillow as she looks to the right with a sad expression.

Edvard Munch

The Sick Girl: The Artist's Sister
Rough, loose black lines depict a figure sitting in a wheelchair, leaning forward and holding a cane. They are situated in a tight space, possibly a hallway.

Michael Mazur

The Occupant

Masami Teraoka 寺岡 政美

Artist and Canvas

Lanzavecchia + Wai Designers

Tattoo Back Brace
In an etching on beige paper, a little person sits cross-legged among books, papers, and a pot of ink. He wears an 18th-century suit and wide-brimmed hat. Text at the bottom is in Spanish. Translated into English reads: “Taken and captured from the original painting of Diego Velazquez which represents the Dwarf of King Philip IV by Francisco Goya, [illegible] in the Royal Palace of Madrid, 1773.”

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

Un Enano (A Dwarf) / El Primo
Hazy watercolor illustrates a green landscape and blue mountain in the distance. Most of the work is covered by a large, deep-yellow and gray cloud filling the otherwise teal sky.

Thomas Sgouros

Remembered Landscape 14 • VIII • 96
  • More objects +

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