Feature Issue on Disability Rights, Disability Justice
The Power of Art in Disability Justice
When you have disabilities, some people speak for you and about you. When a disability is not readily apparent, as is true for my adult son, Taiyo, and for me, creating art provides us freedom and space to speak, sculpt, sing, sound, map, and paint the world as we see it, or as we imagine how the world could be. The arts have always been a vehicle for people with disabilities to push back against societal ableism and its prejudice. The arts represented a form of unpaid labor for state institutions across the United States beginning in the mid-1800s. Hospitals, in addition to operating large dairy and agricultural farms run by “patient” labor, also had people with disabilities working in woodshops, sewing rooms, blacksmithing, and arts and crafts businesses that operated on state hospital grounds. Workers were often leased out to local farmers and businesses and the labor was justified as rehabilitation. Income from this indentured servitude and from products sold was used to sustain the institutions.
When I look at the historical art created by people who were institutionalized, I see examples of people not only protesting what was happening to them, but also teaching us about the full range of the human experience. Their art stands as visual proof of how humans fight back, however we can, whenever we face inhumane conditions imposed by societal discrimination and oppression. Work created by modern artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) is important to study, appreciate, and share.
When you have disabilities, some people unfortunately speak for you and about you. When a disability is not readily apparent, as is true for my adult son, Taiyo, and for me, creating art provides us freedom and space to speak, sculpt, sing, sound, map, and paint the world as we see it, or as we imagine how the world could be. The arts have always been a vehicle for people with disabilities to push back against societal ableism and its prejudice.
The term Art Brut was coined in 1945 by the French artist Jean Dubuffet to refer to art made by artists working outside of the established cultural mainstream. Often the artists had disabilities. Yet even before Dubuffet’s so-called “discovery” of Art Brut, artists with disabilities had long been producing art across all cultures and under harsh conditions, such as within state-controlled and privately-run institutions. So, we must recognize that disability art history (like all history) is complicated by the larger context of powerful external forces like paternalism and ableism.
Artist Jim G. with a guitar he made from cardboard. Photo by Ann Marsden, 1993
Disability Arts History
The arts represented a form of unpaid labor for state institutions across the United States beginning in the mid-1800s. Hospitals, in addition to operating large dairy and agricultural farms run by “patient” labor, also had people with disabilities working in woodshops, sewing rooms, blacksmithing, and arts and crafts businesses that operated on state hospital grounds. Workers were often leased out to local farmers and businesses and the labor was justified as rehabilitation. Income from this indentured servitude and from products sold was used to sustain the institutions.
Colleen Wieck, the executive director of the Minnesota Council on Developmental Disabilities, shared a story of how she remembers walking through Brainerd State Hospital during the advent of deinstitutionalization in Minnesota. She saw how someone confined there had taken cloth and completely decorated their room with a crisscross of torn strips.
“I believe that person slept in the closet and not in a bed,” Wieck said, as she noted this was one of the few choices the person had left to make. These stories of small acts of choice and control, taken together, tell us a more complete story of how people survived during widespread institutionalization and how they still expressed themselves as a way to gain some freedom. People found ways to be themselves and claim their humanity. Such art of the past also honors those people who did not survive to see freedom and those of us today who are still fighting for freedom and justice.
When I look at the historical art created by people who were institutionalized, I see examples of people not only protesting what was happening to them, but also teaching us about the full range of the human experience. Their art stands as visual proof of how humans fight back, however we can, whenever we face inhumane conditions imposed by societal discrimination and oppression. That is the art that most speaks to me, the art of fighting back.
Prize-winning basketry at the Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul fairgrounds, 1926. Source: Unknown photographer, Minnesota Historical Society Collection.
Disability Arts Today
Work created by modern artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) is important to study, appreciate, share, honor, and purchase. Today, the arts are among the most powerful tools people with disabilities have to express themselves and define who we really are, on our own terms. We can share music, objects, images, and the intersensory experiences of our lives to show how we love and despair, and to illustrate every emotion, from joy to rage.
In No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement), a 1994 book by Joseph Shapiro, the author writes about his friend, Jim G., who builds sculptures from found materials. In a recent email, Shapiro told me that Jim usually constructs cars and trucks from scraps of wood and parts he collects and takes from toy cars, as well as from wheelbarrow and bicycle tires, and casters purchased at home improvement stores. Shapiro spoke about a photo of Jim holding a guitar he constructed from wood and cardboard, made as he wanted it to be: oversized but otherwise with the exact proportions. “That guitar was a piece of art, though I don’t think Jim thinks of it that way” Shapiro told me. “It deserves to be on a wall somewhere, but I think staff at one of his group homes threw it out. He doesn’t have it anymore.”
The modern-day story of the artist Jim G. and his guitar encapsulate both how far we have come as society, and how far we have to go to honor artists with IDD. There is room today for artistic freedom for artists with disabilities to express themselves, but at the same time, we must fight as a community to preserve, celebrate, and pay for the art that people with IDD make.
By creating art, people with disabilities demonstrate futures that are possible. At the same time, art can acknowledge all the battle wounds it has taken for us to be here today. Art reveals who we are when we are not forced to wear that scratchy wool blanket of conformity on our shoulders.
Creative self-expression by artists with disabilities serves as a bold declaration: We are here. See us. Hear us. Honor us. We reject pity and confinement, and embrace complexity, resilience, and creativity. Through art, we stake our claim on life and beauty, asserting our right to be seen, heard, and fully recognized.