In “Transformative Access: Activating Disability Desires”, the “disabled” bodies we inhabit foreground our concerns as we, emerging and established artists/designers, curators, project leaders, and advisors, take on critical exploratory work. Here the thematic, creative forms, and community practices are embodied with our pain, frustration, confusions, limitations, desires, loves and cares.
As “disabled” people, our bodies exist in tension with the normalized expectations of ordered bodies. In "Transformative Access," we examine how our bodies’ experiences remake our worlds. In conversation with ideologies, people, policies, and structures, we ask, how can the "crip" body act, given its creative potential, be centred in these practices, and be resilient to ableism.
We ask, “What can a body do...?” But then further expand this to, “What can a body do to… “? What can a body do to architectural structures, institutional expectations, medical practices, and to the very conditions that first created inaccessibility? What can a body do to realize its desires for liberatory and intimate access, to press itself, in Czech feminist Katerina Kolarova’s words, to imagine “crip horizons” — alternative possibilities in which disability can be desirable, and the structures surrounding it, profoundly contested?
OCAD Fall Events Launch Press: Here
Project Launch: Sept 3, 6.30PM - 8.30 PM Gallery 1313.
113Research, 113 McCaul Street (back of the Grange Food Court) , 5th floor
Fall: Sept 16- Jan 2025.
Pam Patterson & Mel Rapp
Ocular Occurrences
Thanks to the Ontario Art's Council for funding support for this exhibition.
Winter: Jan - April 2025.
January 20 to April 13, 2025
nancy viva davis halifax
Curated by Megh Dorward
constant : uncertainty
Yes, And…
April 14, 2025 – Sept 27, 2025
Curators: Ali Brown & Grace MacDonald
Artists: Kiley Brennan, Ali Brown, Krystal Jagoo, Angie Li, Bella Melardi, Parker Maycotte Rojas, Anastasia Vavaroutsos-Moffat.
As student artists and curators with disabilities we dream of environments where we can thrive in our practices celebrating the fullness of our identities without compromising our bodies and minds. Here we disrupt a limited perception of disability by highlighting the breadth of our experiences. We celebrate the complexity of who we are, not just as disabled individuals navigating our way through inaccessible systems, but as artists, creators, and thinkers. We recognize the need, and pave way for, curatorial practices in which our art-work and body-work is valid, valuable, and appreciated for its artistic merit and its innovation from proposal to installation.
“Yes, And…” features work from OCAD U students from the Disability Community & Culture Group (DCCG), a space for students to explore and celebrate disability identity through participating in social activities, advocacy, and exhibition opportunities. If you would like to join, email Ali at dccg.group@gmail.com
Project Events OCAD University:
Fall 2024:Panel: Nov 14 12-2 PM, Disability Aesthetics and Inclusive Pedagogy: Pam Patterson (moderator), Sean Lee, Mallory Tolcher.
Winter 2025:
Feb 25 Talk/Workshop on Teams 12 noon: nancy viva davis halifax
Video (*no captions) recording of talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sR7LXkok7M
remaking the factory: within canada disability \ crip \ dada arts are complex & spectacularly uneven in their locations & articulations \ always working under \ alongside or within normative art scenes \ as a crip slow & chronic artist i am oriented differently - attending to the materiality of bodys \ i propose to talk about past & current work inviting audience support as i exhibit the limits of my embodiment with the intent to redistribute & resituate normative & formal expectations \ this impulse arises as most recently my praxis has been informed by chronic illness leaving me working alongside rather than in community
March 25 Talk on Teams 12 noon (link):
Jack Hawk: Disability Aesthetics in/for Community Tangled Arts & Disability.
Jack is the Outreach Coordinator for Tangled Arts + Disability facilitating partnering, outreach opportunities, and education/workshops for the gallery. They also curate the Vitrine Gallery at Tangled and is currently co-curator for the WBG at Gallery 1313 for a TAC-funded project Transformative Access : Activating Disability Desires.
Ali Brown & Grace MacDonald, Curators for 113Research OCAD U: Accessibility in Student Curatorial Projects
Ali Brown is an artist living and working in Mississauga, Ontario. A current Drawing & Painting BFA student at OCAD University, Brown collaborates with personal archives, memory (or lack thereof), and nostalgic imagery to create work that engages both the mind and body of her and her audience’s inner child. Beyond her studio practice, Brown is interested in and actively involved with arts education and disability arts communities within the university, receiving the Diversity & Equity Excellence student award for her ongoing advocacy.
Grace MacDonald is a third year Criticism and Curatorial Practices student, a member of CRIP Lab, and the lead curator for 113Research. She has a personal interest in accessibility in the arts, working with and understanding the experiences of people and artists with disabilities. She hopes to make accessibility in the arts one of her mail foci in her studies.
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Photos by John Oughton
Jose Miguel Esteban
Access as Fugitive Practice: Abolitionist Provocations through Disability Arts and Culture
Megh Dorward
Activating Mad Art and Aesthetics: Conscious Co-curating
I will share my recent research Activating Mad Art and Aesthetics: Transcending the Biomedical Gaze illuminating the complex synergies and differences between Disability Studies and Mad Studies that I contend gives grounds for a uniquely Mad-centred approach to Mad Art and aesthetics. Touching on this current research, I build upon the aforementioned premise by developing a related methodology for equitably co-curating exhibitions with fellow Mad and disabled artists and curators. Conscious co-curating—as I’ve named this modality—foregrounds and holds space for collaborators’ experiential knowledge, while it incorporates Mad Studies, Disability Arts, queer, feminist, slow-, and care-based frameworks.
nancy halifax exhibit and project closing event @ Tangled Arts + Disability. 401 Richmond Street, Suite 124, Thursday April 10, 6PM. *Bring your companion animals!
The idea for this event itself draws from the principles of creative access and conversational image description. Because not everyone will have seen the 113Research exhibit at OCAD, nancy will describe/conjure the content/context of the exhibition constant : uncertainty for those gathered at Tangled. We will then lovingly describe (our) support animals to each other through both image description and poetry using the form of a brief ekphrastic poetry workshop.
Gallery 1313, Window Box Gallery
Curated by Mason Smart and Jack Hawk
Sept 1, 2024: Harmeet Rehal’s Manjas as Mobility Aids, 2023,
Dec 1, 2024: Sunshine Torme Johnson's Home to Heal
March 2025: Hollis McConkey
For more information: https://wiaprojects.blogspot.com/p/2024-2024-programming.html
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