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September 10, 2024 – Review
“Crip Arte Spazio: The Disability Arts Movement in Venice”
Kenny Fries
The past few years have seen more disability-themed art exhibitions staged worldwide. The majority of these exhibitions, most notably “Crip Time” (Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main), included both disabled and non-disabled artists and were curated by non-disabled curators, resulting in a medicalized focus with a lack of historical context. It seems a recent emphasis on exhibits focusing on “the body,” first prompted by an academic interest in transhumanism, and then perhaps primed by Covid-19, have led to a co-opting, of sorts, of disability for disability or disability-adjacent exhibitions.
Now, “Crip Arte Spazio: The Disability Arts Movement in Venice“ changes this trajectory. The exhibit focuses on the UK Disability Arts Movement (DAM)—its history and its contemporary progeny. The exhibit is curated by David Hevey, the CEO of Shape Arts, the UK disability-led arts organization and producer of “DAM in Venice.”
This transformation of perspective is clear even before entering the exhibit. Parked outside—and lifted front first to a forty-five degree angle—is Gold Lamé (2014), sculptor Tony Heaton’s refashioned National Health Service (NHS) Invacar. Heaton, perhaps the best known of the DAM artists, encases in gold what was a blue vehicle given by the state health service to disabled drivers, …