Crip News v.201

New works, other news, calls, and events.

Sep 22, 2025

New Works

Sifting through a book, divergent yet connected tectonics are revealed. Pages give way to a fleeting gesture — a hand impressed in sand, a metaphor for artmaking and the elusive flow of time. Deeper into the issue, abstracted pages become a lattice of potential destinations. The shapes are derived from the contours of a book, but move beyond this solitary space and into the collective flow of living. With the abstract shapes situated onto the sand motif, the viewer is quietly asked to make their own impression, both physically and metaphorically.

The new issue of New Suns, a publication from United States Artists, features awardees of the Disability Futures Fellowship. Edited by Disability Futures Manager Ezra Benus, it includes writing by JJJJJerome Ellis, Finnegan Shannon and Emily Sara, Naomi Ortiz, Eli Clare, Luz Guerra, and Tourmaline, Christine Bruno, Dickie Hearts, and Natasha Ofili, and Jen Deerinwater.

A square frame captures a medium close-up of someone sitting on the floor, Two legs adorned in delicate fishnet stockings rest gently, while sparkling rubber boots ignite a sense of daring, joy, and rebellion. Between them, a metal cane rest on their legs.

This Body Keeps Me Up At Night: 30 Years of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is up at Tangled Art + Disability (Toronto) through Oct. 31. The show is “a mid-career retrospective of disability justice writer, cultural worker and renowned hot bitch Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.” At an event this Wednesday, Sept. 24, Piepzna-Samarasinha and Zavisha Chromicz will reflect on the early years of crip culture and collective organizing.
Also at Tangled through Oct. 31 is Pam Patterson’s Ocular Occurrences: Sites of Perception, a show that captures the artist’s “multilayered visual (low distorted vision and unpredictable visual processing) reality.” Remote audiences can experience both exhibitions with Rosa the Robot.

Polyurethane Foam is exactly what its title states—a block of foam—yet it engages with something much more. The dense foam is used in a variety of objects to absorb sound and pressure, including the wheelchair Park McArthur uses every day. Over time, the foam changes, peeling and deteriorating from the constant push-and-pull between material and body: the foam molds to a body but is also molded by the body. It holds the stories, exchanges, and material traces of its user. The monolithic form of Polyurethane Foam has enough material for dozens of wheelchairs, representing the possibility of collective community and gathering despite social structures that often separate and isolate individuals with disabilities. Displacing the foam from its original context and making it an art object, the sculpture materializes tensions between access, dependency, and care. — **Park McArthur**, **Polyurethane Foam** (2024)

In Feeling: Empathy and Tension Through Disability is on view at the Fralin Museum of Art (Charlottesville, Virginia) through Jan. 4, 2026. Curated by Molly Joyce and Kristen Nassif, the show “explores the generative possibilities that arise when artists disrupt socially constructed ideas about ability, normalcy, and productivity.” Featuring work by JJJJJerome Ellis, Jerron Herman, Molly Joyce, Jeff Kasper, Christine Sun Kim, Park McArthur, Finnegan Shannon, Andy Slater, and Liza Sylvestre.

Abstract graphic mark resembling an easel form, used as a visual motif throughout the exhibition design. This sculptural-painterly symbol represents artistic practice and serves as a rhythmic branding element in place of the LOOK HERE logotype.

LOOK HERE is a project that “illuminates how neurodivergent artists challenge and expand conventional approaches to artmaking” by convening and celebrating the work of "progressive art studios.” It features 3 exhibitions at Haverford College (Pennsylvania) and Atelier Gallery (Philadelphia), a symposium next month, and a publication.
SENSORY-SCAPES, “a multisensory textile exhibit” by Sugandha Gupta, is on view at the Positive Exposure Gallery (NYC) through Oct. 10. Gupta will offer an in-person tour of the show on Saturday, Sept. 27 from 5 - 7pm ET.
FRAGMENTS OF DISABILITY FICTIONS by Ignacio G. Galán, David Gissen, and Architensions (Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro) recently opened at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The project “depicts worlds in which disabled cultures manifest themselves—illustrating their flourishing, struggles, negotiations, and fights.”

Against a background of cool blue, purple, and teal tones, intricate linework in white and black outline nearly figural scenes.

Speaking Volumes, a group show of works by “supported”/”progressive” studios in the US, UK, and Sweden, is on view at Malmö Konsthall (Sweden) through Jan. 18, 2026. Featuring Nicole Storm (Creative Growth, USA), Monica Valentine (Creative Growth, USA), Alan Faulds (Artlink, UK), Mawuena Kattah (Intoart, UK), Mattias Johansson (Inuti, Sweden), and David Cheung (Malmö, Sweden).
The Saskatchewan Arts Alliance and Listen to Dis have released “Axis of Access,” a guide supporting “a broader understanding of intimate access from a disability cultural perspective.”

A recording from the Longmore Institute on Disability’s 2025 Emerge Symposium is now on YouTube. The event featured the cohort of emerging Disability Studies scholar-activists Allie Pauld, Alysse Swann, Genevieve Ramos, Jen Ham, OBSIDIENNE OBSURD, peace Waters, Titania Buchholdt, Tiezst “Tie” Taylor, and Stardust Pine-jorah, with a keynote by Jade T. Perry called “Tend Fire, Pour Water, Believe Earth, Bless Bone: Disability Justice and Black Helping & Healing Traditions."
“Disabled fashion girlie” April Lockhart recently launched Disabled&, a “community that celebrates disability not just as an identity, but as a source of style, ambition, creative power and connection.”

In Other News…

The US Department of Justice recently sued Uber for “discriminating against passengers with disabilities, including blind individuals who use service animals and those who use mobility devices including stowable wheelchairs, by routinely refusing to serve these individuals, imposing impermissible charges, and refusing to reasonably modify Uber’s policies to avoid discrimination.”

A photo of a disabled woman in her powerchair. She is brightly lit outside on a street, wearing an orange vest, teal shirt, jeans, and white shoes.

Daphne Frias was named one of TIME’s 2025 Latino Leaders for her work on environmental and disability justice.
Pope Leo XIV recently issued an order encouraging disability employment “in a spirit of welcome” in all Vatican institutions.

CALLS

One Stroke At A Time, a health justice Transatlantic, community-led initiative by Fever Verse, is seeking submissions from “queer and allied artists of all ages and backgrounds through art, writing, and experiment.” Submit by Oct. 31.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and Alison Kopit are beginning an access audit process and are recruiting a group of Deaf and disabled stakeholders who have had access experiences with BAM that they'd like to share. If selected, you will receive a pair of tickets to the newly renovated BAM cinema. Apply ASAP.

EVENTS

Art & Mind - COVID, Climate & Our Future
Thursday, Sept. 24, 6:30 - 9:30pm ET, online
Sista Creatives Rising's 3rd Art & Mind event focuses on themes of COVID, climate & disability, their ongoing effects on disabled ВІРОС creatives, and how it's affected their art.
Cripping the Past: A Social Dance Ball
Saturday, September 27, 6 - 9pm ET, in-person at The Village at Black Creek (Toronto)
Step into an evening where history meets joy, movement, and accessibility! Join Pushmakers for a FREE night of guided dancing, live demonstrations, delicious food, and community fun at The Village. This family-friendly event reimagines cultural and historic social dances to be more accessible and queer-affirming.
What Does It Smell Like? Multisensory World-Building as Access in Dance Performance
Sept. 25 - 27, Vienna
Part of the Society for Dance Research’s Dance Resonance Symposium. This workshop from Rachel DeForrest Repinz will offer insights into my methodology for dancemaking that brings together access tools like audio description, storytelling, improvisation, and multisensory immersion. At the center of this work is a destabilizing of the notion that dance is a visual art form. Instead, we will explore how dance performance can manifest as a multisensory experience.
Planting Disabled Futures: Touching Plant Elders in Virtual Reality
Sunday, Sept. 28, 11am - 12pm PT, on Zoom
Part of "other others 〰️ a place for skin thinking," a distributed, hybrid symposium that explores touch imaginaries across disciplines and practices. Petra Kuppers will offer a talk + somatic session on Crip intimacies, healing immersive worlds, and Disabled peoples’ embodied ways of knowing.

suman suhag

Sep 24

Birth rate Turkey 1.6, Tunisia 1.8 (number of children by woman in fertile age). Iran (super Muslim) 1.7. Bangladesh 2.0 children per woman in fertile age. Brunei, Bahrain, UAE all 1.9–2.1 . So barely replacement rate. The main determinant behind higher rates of birth are rurality, poverty, lack of healthcare and war. The US contributed plenty the risk of war in Muslim countries through their brazen support for Islamic fundamentalism since the afghan Russian conflict. Where it has taken roots and instability reigns women are less likely to be able to practice family planning. Islamic fundamentalism is in no way representative of Muslims in general.

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