The Power in Pride Celebration for Disability Pride Month Digital Art Show
There is POWER in Disability Pride and we’re celebrating it all month long by partnering with The Power in Pride Celebration for Disability Pride Month for its second year! This year isn’t just bringing 9 disabled led conversations in our Clubhouse, but this entire virtual art show curated by Rachel Ungerer, a disabled artist and member of the Diversability Leadership Collective—enjoy!
What does disability pride mean to you?
Is it the large public gatherings of protest? Is it the quiet moments at home when you love your disabled self for who you are?
How do we as a disabled community relate to disability pride while living in an ableist society? How can we acknowledge the hardship and oppressions so many of us endure while celebrating all the joy in who we are? What power does disability pride have to shift the narratives about our community and implement tangible social change?
The world does not know our narratives as it should.
So many disabled stories are told by those who never lived them. Society’s view of us and our impact is shaped by these false narratives, reinforcing ableist ideals. This show is an opportunity for disabled artists to tell our own stories about disability. Disability pride is a public expression of a private feeling. Only we as disabled people can share the truth of our relatility. We know the nature of our struggles and which are internal or from an oppressive society. We know our unique strength and how we have found joy in this world. Disabled artists, let’s use this moment to share what disability pride is to us.
“Bust of Man, Blindfolded” by Jeffrey Nemeroff
Bust of Man, Blindfolded, 21" x 18" x 11", mixed media by Jeffrey Nemeroff
Two pictures show both sides of “Bust of Man, Blindfolded”, a sculptural work created using papier-mache and other materials. The bust shows a man from the waist up hunching forward, a large blindfold covering his eyes. It's rough in texture with strips of paper emerging throughout.
Jeffrey Nemeroff
“‘Bust of Man, Blindfolded’ is one of only two pieces I’ve been able to finish since my disability began three years ago. It’s a personal, auto-biographical work that documents my own struggle with chronic pain—both literally and abstractly—while also addressing several universal themes such as suffering, isolation, depression, mortality and even our current climate crisis. The tattered torso of the bust portrays not only the fragility of the human condition but the impermanence of the natural world around us. The eyeless, blindfolded face symbolizes humankind’s lack of foresight when it comes to our individual and collective survival, and our need to look within for emotional, moral, and spiritual guidance and strength. It’s in our nature to withdraw, isolate, and hide from the truth when faced with pain, suffering and monumental change, but our survival depends on our relationship to one another and the Earth.”
“Disability Pride Month Poem” by Nicole Luongo
We hold our heads high with pride
whether we walk or wheel our way
through the ups and downs
of the disability life tide
Life with invisible or physical limitations
isn’t always easy
interacting with us
shouldn’t make you feel queasy
just say hi, that’s all it takes
we have feelings too
ableism makes our hearts ache
to be loved, to be accepted
for who we are
we don’t want your pity
we want to be heard and seen
please teach your kids not to be mean
Don’t assume you know
how our minds and bodies work
ask questions, get to know us
give it time and you’ll see
we’re just living our lives every day
no matter what comes our way
just like you
because we’re people, too
July is Disability Pride Month
pretty cool, right?
it’s about claiming who we are
while continuing the fight
for our healthcare, our jobs
and, ultimately, our rights. © Nicole Luongo
Nicole Luongo is a disability advocate dedicated to raising awareness for cerebral palsy (CP) + selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR), a life-changing surgery for adults (like herself) and children with CP. She’s also an author and a published writer. Nicole’s poetry book, Naked Desires, will celebrate 20 years in print in December 2022.
“Disabled by Chance--Proud by Choice” by Anthony Tusler
Digital Photography- In the foreground is the late Thu Phan using a power wheelchair. Midground is a little person, Eli Gelardin, wearing an Ed Roberts t-shirt taking a photo of her or me. And in the background is the photographer Suzanne Levine amongst others.
Anthony Tusler
“In 2011 the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center sponsored the 2nd Disability Pride parade. It was one, if not the first disability parades on the West Coast. Too often the disability experience is thought to be, and portrayed as, individual struggle. In fact, our strength, political clout, sustenance, joy, and camaraderie all flow from our membership in a vibrant, proud community. It is a community of people with wide-ranging disabilities—all bound together by shared experience.
Photographs of disabled people are most often portray either inspiration porn or political struggle. I try to find the quieter moments, the joy, the love between us. The photos show the lived, non-stereotyped, authentic lives of members of the disability community.”
Art Activism by Marie Dagenais-Lewis
“Act of Revolution” 8”x8” Digital Media the words “being pridefully disabled is an act of revolution” are written in black hand lettering in the top left; vibrant splashes of purple and blue neon toned alcohol ink fills the right, accented by silver filigree.
“I am Capable Despite The Ableist Society” 8”x8” Digital Media the words “I am Capable Despite The Ableist Society” are written in black hand lettering on the left side; splashes of blue teal and purple jeweled toned alcohol ink fills the right side, accented by golden filigree.
“Marie Dagenais-Lewis is an art activist, author, entrepreneur, digital media specialist, and the Operations Manager of Diversability. After experiencing ableism and disability discrimination that rocked her world, she blazed a new trail for herself through art activism. She creates to dismantle The Ableist Society, her powerful art, storytelling and community organization combining to empower a change in the paradigm surrounding disability. Her work as the creator of @r.a.r.e.advoc8 includes the Chronically Spooky series and the Power in Pride Celebration for Disability Pride Month. Her work explores the complexities of a rare, disabled Neurodivergent experience in an ableist society. She self published her “Chronically Spooky” book series to give others an artsy distraction that made them feel seen and heard while communicating Disabled Culture to someone who doesn’t understand it in a way they can be open to. She helps empower and amplify other Disabled advocates, creators and entrepreneurs through the Diversability Leadership Collective, giving them the power and confidence to create their own careers where their Disabled Experience is an asset. Follow her work at @r.a.r.e.advoc8, and email r.a.r.e.advoc8@gmail.com for further inquiries.”
“The only awkward one” by Marlena Chertock
You were the only one at summer camp with a back brace.
Wore it at night when looking boxy mattered less. Sweat
sliding along your spine, you thought you were the only
awkward one, the only one in your cabin small enough
to do a somersault in the bottom bunk, gripping the
bedrails and embracing your inescapable weirdness.
You were the only girl in your kvutzah who feared
she didn’t fit in, not because of social status or looks,
but because of ability. You didn’t identify as disabled then.
You were the one on long hikes through the woods
with knees and hips throbbing
for days afterwards. Inflamed like their own
mountain range. The one with hips that locked
like all the trunks full of clothes in your cabin.
After sitting or standing for too long,
you had to knuckle-crack to move. You seemed to be
the only one at camp who didn’t make out or hook up.
Wondered if it was your shyness, pimple-studded face, back brace, your body.
“The only awkward one” is a poem about summer camp, being the only kid with pain, and insecurities. “The only awkward one” first appeared in Noble/Gas Quarterly in 2017.
Marlena Chertock
“Disability pride is so important to me. I was born with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, a rare bone disorder and form of dwarfism that causes short stature, chronic pain, arthritis, scoliosis, neck instability, hearing and vision problems, and more. I am 4’6” and face many obstacles as a little person. I have been bullied, need to climb on grocery store shelves to reach items, and speak up for myself by requesting accessibility services at work and in society.
I use my skeletal dysplasia and chronic pain as a bridge to scientific poetry, often exploring the rich images in science and medicine, threading genetics, space, and nature into my work. Through poetry, I describe and define pain, which is invisible but very real. I write about pain, bodies, inaccessibility, and the way my body exists in the world. I share my reality of living with disability and mental illness.
I am incredibly proud to be a part of the disability community, as well as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Because of my chronic pain, inability to walk or stand for long periods of time, and PTSD from a gun scare at a Capital Pride Parade, I am not able to engage in marches, rallies, or similar in person events. Writing poetry, essays, and journalistic articles is my way of protest, my way of politically engaging, my way of pushing against an ableist world. Living in a society built for average height people, a society that is ableist at its core, inspires me to write to create a better world, a more accessible world, a world where disability is celebrated, and understood, and not “othered”. Writing and sharing stories in our “own voices” is critical.
My first book, On that one-way trip to Mars, is a version of the Voyager’s Grand Tour, if the spacecraft had skeletal dysplasia. It is a space journey through the solar system and beyond, with aliens finding the Golden Record, the increasing warmth of the sun, zero gravity to give aching bones a break, and a call for NASA to not have height restrictions on their rockets. On that one-way trip to Mars was published by Bottlecap Press in May 2016, nominated for an Elgin Award in 2017, and unfortunately went out of print in July 2020.
My second book of poetry, Crumb-sized: Poems, uses frank humor and radical honesty to explore varied and critical aspects of identity ― femininity, gender, sexuality ― as they relate to my disability. When I was in elementary school, a bully called me smaller than a crumb. The taunt stuck with me ever since. As a kid, I didn’t know how to respond, but as an adult, I was able to reflect and use it in my writing, even making it my title. Crumb-sized: Poems was published by Unnamed Press in 2017 and was a finalist in the Etchings Press Whirling Prize in 2019.
Being a part of the literary community is extremely important to me as well. I serve as Co-Chair of OutWrite, Washington, D.C.’s annual LGBTQ literary festival. Along with local poet Malik Thompson, I cultivate inclusive literary programming that reflects and uplifts LGBTQ+ communities, manage coordinators and volunteers, and oversee the publication of the festival’s journal and chapbooks. I also serve on the board of Split This Rock, a national network of socially engaged poets that cultivates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. I have served on the board of the LGBTQ+ Writers Caucus as a part of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), as well as participating as a member of AWP’s D/deaf and Disabled Writers Caucus. My poetry and prose has appeared in AWP’s The Writer’s Notebook, Breath & Shadow, The Deaf Poets Society, Lambda Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Paper Darts, Washington Independent Review of Books, WMN Zine, Wordgathering, and more.”
“Feeling Hospital Blue” by Isra Amsdr
Size: 10 x 10 inches
Material: 120mm Colour Film Photography
Image #1: A photograph on 120mm colour film created by Isra Amsdr. A woman in a white hijab, a blue hospital gown, and red non-slip hospital socks sitting on the kitchen floor next to an IV pole that is hanging a bag of formula and a feeding pump. They are connected to tubing that runs from the bag of formula, through the feeding pump, and is attached to the feeding tube under their hospital gown.
Image #2: A photograph on 120mm colour film created by Isra Amsdr. A woman in a white hijab and a blue hospital gown is using one hand to hold onto an IV pole in front of them that is hanging a bag of formula and a feeding pump. Their other hand is pulling the bag for formula away from them and they situate their face between the IV pole and the bag of formula.
Isra Amsdr
“Grief. I have never really understood the weight this 5-letter word can hold until
recently. Grief often feels like it is this bottomless pit. But in reality, it is not. Grief, in the
simplest way put, is just love. All the love you no longer can express when someone
close to you passes. The action of grieving is universal and there is an element of
shared humanity among it. What makes grieving personal, is the mourning– or the
inward expression of the grieving. However way we choose to mourn, I think that the
hardest part about any loss is not the losing in itself, but the living that comes after the
loss. With my circumstances, the loss is incessant and unrelenting because I live with
an illness that affects 94% of my body. At many points in my life, I have spent more time
in a hospital bed than I have in my own bed. I have always been someone to know what
I stand for– but, I don’t anymore. I don’t know much about myself or who I am other than
that I am sick. But, I am really just trying to focus on that living part after the loss.
Consequently, I have devoted my time as an artist having to redundantly re-learn
how my body will allow me to make art. In turn, I have never emerged with a single,
consistent, artistic practice as the artists I surround myself with do. In the collective
spaces where we create and display art, my work is scattered, inconsistent, and
incoherent, as the life this illness has brought me, is, as well. And in the spaces that I
take up, I persevere to be a kinetic definition of an artist. To deviate the expectations
that try to conform and confine me and every other young, chronically ill and disabled
artist. In the space of my artistic practice, I depict my empirical encounters of being an
underling to pathologized grief; to resist and refuse the rebukings imposed onto me that
diminish my endeavours at continuing to live after each, incessant, and, unrelenting,
loss. Because at the end of the day, they don’t create books on how to mourn your own
wellbeing.”
“Mobility Aid Love” by Ray Soller
Digital illustration accompanying a poem; illustration features a thin, white, masculine presenting person, sitting in a navy blue mobility scooter shown from behind. They have short messy light brown hair and they're wearing a yellow hat, beige t-shirt, white converse, and black pants. There are papers and a black foldable cane in the scooter's front basket. There are small red hearts around the scooter and at the top there is red bubble text that says, "mobility aid love". The background is solid white.
Mobility Aid Love
i hate walking.
the steps feel like
legs made of bricks
made of dust.
stopping,
adjusting,
pretending.
mobility is freedom
is joy
is gliding through the woods. is enjoying the scenery
for the first time,
Is being reborn
with fire,
a new piece of you,
creating access
to a world,
is this what love feels like?
to be in the world
moving freely?
to be present
in the moment,
in your body,
in space and time and joy.
not bound to fake smiles
and turning down invitations and uneasy answers
and days recovering
from an empty errand.
not bound to the gravity
that holds bone to floor
that buckles
under the expectation of easy tasks. point A
to B.
I am free.
My bones thank me thank my chair
thank my cane
thank me.
love is endless when that part of you
that yearns to move is filled.
Ray J. Soller
“I am a queer, trans, Autistic, ambulatory wheelchair user with chronic pain. Last year I started my illustration business creating custom illustrated portraits under the name Brainfog Designs as a way to support myself through art.
I wrote this poem as a love letter to my mobility aids. Often mobility aids are treated as a tragedy or as something confining, but my piece aims to communicate that mobility aids are freedom and something worthy of love and appreciation.
The accompanying illustration was created from my bed using a simple drawing app on my iPad. It is a self portrait, showing me from behind and is focused on my mobility scooter. It is based off of a photograph that my grandma took of me while we were exploring the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in 2021. It was my first time using a mobility scooter and it was shocking how it allowed me to connect with my surroundings and have access to the joy that others find in these sort of spaces. With less pain, I was able to enjoy my time and be more present in the moment. I felt free for the first time.”
DIYabled by Priya Ray
1. “Asheville Middle School”, 11” x 14” Photography Photograph of a red staircase. From the body of work called "Completely Tilted Back.” This body of work shows things from the perspective of being completely tilted back in my wheelchair.
2. “Unrecognized Potential” , 11”x14” Digital Art Digital art of 4 different disabled people with the word s saying “Unrecognized Potential” on top with psychedelic colors
“I Am A Champion” by Amanda Harrinauth
I am a champion; Autism is my superpower.
I will change the world, fighting against intolerance.
ASD, makes me unique.
I am free, to experience the world.
I will teach others to dance with a difference and and seek those who never thought it was possible to rise up from the bottom.
I am a champion, just by being Autistic and that is me.
Amanda Harrinauth
“I am a poet and a spontaneous spoken word artist. Diagnosed at the age of 26 with autism, poetry is where found my Life‘s work. Disability pride is having the courage and confidence to speak your truth. Allowing everybody’s difference to move them forward, instead of holding them back from truly embracing who they are.
Autism is strength and discomfort. Disability pride is looking those in the face, Who didn’t believe in you, proving them wrong and walking away.”
“Warning Label” by Marnika Shelton
Warning Label is a digital media video piece created by Marnika Shelton. It begins with depicting different derogatory words used to describe people who have neurologically divergent traits. Words such as dumb, stupid & lazy appear on the screen then lead into images of people holding signs showing their differences followed by a description of the items shared. The piece concludes with the statement “It is easy to judge what is happening outside when you don’t know what’s going on inside.”
Marnika Shelton
“Warning Label is a piece that brings to light the disabilities that we do not see on the surface, the invisible ones. Because these disabilities are not obvious, it is easy to assume that they do not exist. These differences affect our daily lives and we deal them with in silence. Warning Label is designed to allow people to see inside the human experience of neuro-diversity.”
“Ehlers Danlos” by Ayelet Schrek
An arm starting at the shoulder, reaching from the left toward the viewer palm forward. Swirls and dashes of blue and green cover the arm and hand, tendrils of which bleed out of the hand where the thumb would be, fading into the background. The background is an ombre of yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue, curving around the hand. Braids of purple/blue yarn are overlaid like muscles through the arm and fingers, ending and fraying at the joints, held on by blood red paint.
Ayelet Schrek
“My body is beautiful. My body is broken. There is no beauty in my pain but my pain is never everything I am. I make beautiful things. I share myself. Always there is effort. Sometimes there is flow. My hands ache and fail, make and unveil. I wish for ease, but I live in creation. I share my creation.
Only those who pay attention notice my pain. If you look into my eyes long enough you might learn to see them dulled with migraine, a contrast to their curious sheen. If you listen to me speak as time elapses, you might begin to hear the restriction in my breath, the shallow sound of not-enough-energy, that twists its way through my vibrant voice. If I let you touch my skin, you will feel the knots cascading through my muscles, the ever-present tension that comes from holding together so many ill-connected parts.
Do you choose to pay attention? Why? Because you know me and love me? Or do you, could you, love me without knowing me? Can you love the hands behind this painted hand? Love them for their effort? Love them for their beauty? Love them for their sheer existence? A single point of connection, a painting I made, that you witness. Is this enough to ignite a love for sheer existence? To love me, not for my utility, not for what I am to you, just for being.
This is my pride. This is my integrity. To love you for existing. To build up nuance from there, from that foundation. It’s not the foundation I was given. Buried in the concrete of ableism, I couldn’t recognize myself. And then my body broke to pieces, and I squeezed my way through the impossibly, impassibly narrow cracks. Each piece of myself I razed and raised to an unfamiliar, resonant ground, and I began to build anew, shaking off the heavy slabs of clinging concrete, weaving a garden peppered by rubble. Weaving a garden, at first, alone, and then with you, and you, and them, and you. This garden will never not need tending. It is a work only some people have learned how to recognize. I invite those people in. Everyone else, I invite to learn to recognize. I invite you. I invite you. I invite you.”
About our Curator, Rachel Ungerer
A drawing in charcoal on white paper created by Rachel Ungerer shows a fist raised with another hand wrapped around its wrist. Below is written “Disabled Hands Strong Hands”.
“Rachel Ungerer is a local Bay Area, queer, disabled artist. She uses gestural brushstrokes to capture fleeting moments of emotion.
After developing a constant chronic pain condition that limits the use of both hands, Ungerer re-trained herself to paint by working with her disabled body. By publicly identifying as someone with an invisible disability, Ungerer hopes to promote greater awareness and eliminate negative stigmas.
Ungerer’s lifelong passion for art inspired her to earn a major in Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles with a focus on painting. Her work has shown in Los Angeles, Louisville KY, San Francisco, Mill Valley, and Palo Alto. Her artwork was recently featured with other disabled artists in “The Art of Disability Culture”, which shared disabled culture with a broader audience. That was such a positive experience, Rachel was inspired to take a different role and curate this show to celebrate how powerful disabled artists are.”