Crip News v.216

New works, calls, events, and intensities.

Jan 19, 2026

NEWS

New Works

a low view of a bench set on a concrete rectangle with grass surrounding it. The shadow of the bench extends down into the grass, only a hint of it is seen in the upper right corner. McArthur photographed this herself seated in her wheelchair, camera situated in her lap. The bench is located near the site of Beverly Buchanan’s Marsh Ruins. — **Park McArthur**’s **Overlook Park 3** (2017).

Writer Evan Fusco has published a 4-part essay called “‘But I didn’t put a sign’: poetics of the unseen gesture in the work of Beverly Buchanan and Park McArthur.”
For Revival Disability Magazine, artist and facilitator Apoorva Verma writes about “chronic loss” and sitting with “fragmented grief, internal conflict, and the quiet labor of survival, art-making, and self-recognition.”
Legal scholar Vijay K. Tiwari recently reviewed “interventions to ensure reasonable accommodation in prison” in India’s judicial system. “The task before democratic forces,” he writes, “is not to make prisons more accessible, but to question their legitimacy and work towards their abolition.”

A woman walking through a pair of rose adorned combat boots and a cane. — Illustration by **Celia Jacobs**.

Anne Gridley’s Watch Me Walk, a new play presented by Soho Rep about “disability, pity, injustice, and family mythologies,” is at Playwrights Horizons (NYC) through Feb. 8 with mask-required and ASL interpreted performances. Hilton Als calls it “a prime example of what we get when autobiographical theatre works: intelligence, and the ability to laugh at oneself, with one’s heart, as always, in both the wrong and the right place.”

Disabled artists Jillian Mercado and Lauren “Lolo” Spencer have launched a podcast called We’ve Been Like This.

A woman sits in a chair inside a room in an art gallery with various kinds of lighting on artworks hanging on walls and resting on the floor. — Photo by **Jonathan Wong**.

Artist and organizer Sophie Cheung Hing-yee’s exhibition Decolonising Madness: The Naturally (In)complete Human is up at Eaton HK (Hong Kong) through Feb. 1.

A graphic highlights the cover of the comic "Long [COVID] Story Short". It features an illustration of a Black woman in a robe with her arms outstretched looking at the viewer. A purple and pink background add visual interest. It reads, "Long COVID Story Short" by Peace Waters and Dimitrea Tokunbo" — **Peace Waters** and **Dimitrea Tokunbo**’s **Long [COVID] Story Short** zine.

In The Sick Times, chronically ill artist Grae Salisbury spotlights “Nine artists illustrating Long COVID and the ongoing pandemic.”
A 3-day disability arts festival, “Carnival of the Different,” begins today in Thiruvananthapuram, India.

A Singaporean femme powerchair-user poses with an anthology called Not Without Us against floor to ceiling windows that show a city far below.

The Straits Times recently profiled disabled Singapore-based writer Sherry Toh Yee Teng.
Luísa Pires, founder of the Neurodiversity Architecture Network, recently submitted an “intersectional neurodivergence flag” to POoR Collective’s recent open call for flag designs.

CALLS

Rotten Crip Collective. The letters are in a serif font that looks like it’s fermenting and bubbling. In the background are dotted outlines of the collective’s name in various places on the canvas.

The London-based Rotten Crip Collective is seeking writing, visual works, and audio for a Rotten Vol. 1: Crip Imaginings. Submit by Jan. 22.
The Field Funds program from A Blade of Grass has an open call for $500 grants supporting accessibility and translation. Apply by Jan. 31.
The Disability Belongs Entertainment Lab, a 5-month program for disabled creatives, is accepting applications for next cohort. Apply by Jan. 21.

EVENTS

Patty Berne Memorial Birthday Celebration & Community Syllabus Release
Thursday, Jan. 22, 8 - 10pm ET, on Zoom
Patty Berne — beloved Disability Justice visionary and force of nature for collective liberation — would have celebrated their 59th birthday on January 21st. As we continue to mourn their absence earthside, the Health Justice Commons invites you to gather with us virtually in beloved community to celebrate Patty’s beautiful life of tireless commitment to our people, and to uplift Patty’s teachings and world-changing legacy. We will hold space for people to share lessons, memories, poems, songs, and images as people are moved to. We will also share a Patty Berne syllabus and study guide that reflects the loving labor of movement partners and comrades.
Out Front with Us: Documenting Solidarity
Friday, Jan. 23, 1pm ET, in-person at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (Washington, D.C.)
This event is a panel that brings archival collections into conversation with artists today to explore mutual support between LGBTQ+ and disability activism. Featuring photographers Joan E. Biren, Lola Flash, and Leigh Mosley along with painter and writer Riva Lehrer, the discussion will draw on oral histories from the Archives of American Art, the world’s largest collection of interviews related to the visual arts, as well the artists’ decades of experience documenting community activism. Highlighting collections including the oral history of John Dugdale, a photographer who lost his vision, as well as Biren, Flash, and Lehrer’s own oral histories, the program participants will reflect on how recording the past emboldens our shared future.

There’s a tilted horizon and thin lines that shoot out from a vanishing point like a sunset (the usual Crip News header) except the colors are inverted and it’s a black background with white lines, like nighttime. Big text floats over the land-line: INTENSITIES BELOW. Smaller text under: we could breathe, hold the breath and let it out slow, mist the plants, or notice a sensation, get water, leave the screen entirely, nap

For Nonprofit Quarterly, journalist Alison Stine recently reported on “The Danger ICE Poses to the Disabled Community.”
In the newest issue of The Scholar & Feminist Online, Professor Bayan Abusneineh published “Reproductive Genocide, Disabling Futures, and Carcerality in Gaza.”

A concrete marker with grass growing all around and partly over it. — Photo by **Lucy Lu**.

Sonia A. Rao, disability reporter for The New York Times, published an article about one man’s quest to find answers about the death of his brother at the Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In November 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar published a report called “The Hidden Crisis: Disability Rights in Post-Coup Myanmar.”
Last month, Disability Rights Connecticut published an investigative report on “Systemic Failures Caused Sexual Abuse of Females at York Correctional Institution.”

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