For a long time, I wanted people to see my art on its own merit. I thought, holding onto this artist identity meant that people would stop treating me as another human-interest story for having two digits on each limb. I made wearable art and explored the staring dynamics in my master’s thesis in art therapy. I was determined to be an art therapist who would use art to change people’s perception of bodily differences. At that time, it somehow felt liberatory to disconnect myself from disability. In 2006, I came out disabled after meeting fellow disabled activists and artists at a festival. I found much resonance with them and their work. It was a profound awakening and undeniably healing moment in my life: I felt seen and held by the shared lived experiences in their art. I finally felt “whole”. Then, I was struck by the anti-healing, anti-art therapy sentiment in our conversations. I realized that while I fully embraced the healing potential of art making and story-telling in art therapy, I did not examine the power hierarchy and how care is delivered and structured in art therapy and in the larger mental health system.

Medicalization of disability, including healing, curing and treating disabled patients–has created stigma which often leads to the conclusion that art about disability and mental illness must be the result of art therapy. The cathartic and therapeutic effect of art making is undeniable for all people. It is said to believe that such “healing” processes must be accompanied by professional art therapists. I found myself advocating for a separation between disability art and art therapy. Especially after seeing many disabled artists, including myself, try to establish disability art as a genre. The tension and connection between disability art and what it means to experience healing are often intangible. Attaching the word “healing” to disability can feel messy as “healing” often refers to the individual process of becoming/returning to sound and healthy. However, in recent years, communities of activists and care workers have forefronted healing as a part of the social justice movement. The collective needs to heal together are now considered restorative and even activism. The shift from self-care to collective care has also been a force of disability community cohesion and an act of resistance against ableist agendas. The need for “healing” as an experience, a connection with fellow disabled/Crip people, outside of the medical domain has always been desirable.

This gallery explores the multiple meanings of “healing” experienced in disabled artists’ personal and professional life, and their portrayals of healing in their own artwork. Through interviewing four Chicago-based disabled artists, this gallery raises the following questions: What connotation does healing have to those of us who live with a disability? How do we talk about healing and represent or claim it according to our Crip culture and Crip experiences?

The artists selected in this gallery are people whom I have personally worked with in my capacity as arts administrator, residency program coordinator, colleagues and co-conspirator.

Genevieve Ramos (she/her), a painter who primarily works with acrylic on canvas, started painting for the first time in her life in art therapy sessions while receiving rehabilitation and treatments for her spinal cord and brain injuries in a hospital in 2011. She discovered her talents and interests in art, which became an outlet for her to process her experience of isolation in the hospital and the transitioning into her disabled body. As an emerging artist, she started painting portraits with surreal and abstract themes with bright colors. Genevieve has centered her art practice in community organizing and disability advocacy. Her most recent project, Crip Paint Power, depicts portraits of 4 BIPOC disabled women leaders in Chicago.

Brianna Beck (she/her) an interdisciplinary artist, and Lily Diego-Johnson (she/her) a writer/poet both have directly and indirectly explored “healing” in their practice as artists. (Bri) anna’s artistic practice ranges from graphic design, installation art, drawing and painting, printmaking to furniture design. Art is a central model of self-expression to Bri. Her art explores and interprets her own lived experiences navigating in an ableist and inaccessible societal structure. Based on her personal narratives, she creates sculptural objects to address assumptions and stigma surrounding disability.

Lily’s poem on cure and healing sheds light on the use of spoken word in disability art. Her work brings people into conversation through her experiences as a blind person. Her poetry emphasizes the tensions, issues, strengths, and joy in her communities. Lily sees the power of personal story as knowledge, and considers writing as a form of advocacy for social change. Bri, an art therapist and Lily, a clinical social worker, both provide mental health counseling through a disability-affirming approach.

Katie O’Neille (she/her) self-identifies as a proud Mad woman, whose mental illness informs her creative and research practice as a performance artist and a choreographer. She creates videos and performances that articulate negotiations of visibility, the mental as physical, and the paranormal as crip metaphor. She queers space/time through crafted environments of multimodal seating, projection, and layers of material, to elicit a spoken curation of fractured poetry, statistics, and memoir. She aims to capture the complex and ephemeral peculiarities of madness to critically destabilize the rapid, compulsory able-bodied/minded mythologizing of hidden disabilities. She uses choreography to rescript alternative healing practice to represent disability and Mad experiences. Together, these artists’ work explores and redefines non-medicalized alternatives to healing and radical self-care. The conversations with them capture the complexity of vulnerability and strength. Their work serves as threads that weave a disability art tapestry, which is imbued with disability activism, advocacy and peer support.