NEWS
Screen Digest
This week, the highly anticipated film Being Heumann will have its world premiere as the opening night selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. Adapted from Judy Heumann’s 2020 memoir and directed by Oscar-winner Siân Heder (CODA), it stars disabled British actress Ruth Madeley as Heumann. The film opens in select theaters on November 6 and streams on Apple TV starting November 13.
Photo by Patrick Donovan. Last month, Esquire published an interview with disabled actor Steve Way. Way, the “secret weapon” of Hulu’s crime thriller Furious, tells Anthony Breznican about how the show makes a break from the usual ableist tropes to convey “how there actually is someone for everyone.”
Brailled It, a documentary “filmed by the blind, for the blind” about the annual Braille Challenge competition in LA, is screening in NYC this week as part of the film’s theatrical tour of the US.
New Works
Victoria Dugger: Runner Up is on view at the Dodd Galleries at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA) through November 29th. Dugger, the (not-runner up) winner of the Dodd School of Art’s 2026 Margie E. West Alumni Prize, uses Southern gothic aesthetics to explore “the politics of embodiment and sharply speaking to experiences of Blackness, femininity, disability, and desire.”
Material. I (2025). Photo by blue. Mae Howard’s first solo show, between the skin and flesh, a thing, is on view at A.I.R. Gallery (Brooklyn) through October 4. The “disabled erotics” of Howard’s photographs document “BDSM scenes in which they are both subject and co-author, keeping at the center the collaborative processes that produced the stills.” The opening reception takes place on September 9 from 5 - 8pm ET with a mask required hour from 5 - 6.
Ariana Martinez, Ghost Affliction [it blooms from the marrow] (2025). Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber. There’s no me without you by Finnegan Shannon opens at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn) this week. On view until December 20, the installation features a 12-foot mechanized conveyor belt as a “foundation for three successive solo presentations of new works created for this project by emerging and established figures of New York City’s disability art scene: Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Ariana Martinez, and Alex Dolores Salerno.” The opening reception takes place on September 11 from 7 - 9pm ET.
The September issue of Able News features a personal article by Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, a review of Phamaly Theatre Company’s 504: The Musical by disability historian Warren Shaw, and more.
Sick (Music) Center and musician anna RG’s HOUSE CALLS project offers “one on one, and intimate music + performance shared directly from one disabled person to another, either over the telephone or delivered to bedrooms or bedroom windows.”
Disabled composer and performer Molly Joyce recently published a playlist centering adaptive music technology on I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, a media platform from the American Composers Forum.
untame flow stay release, curated by Jussi Koitela and Aneta Rostkowska in collaboration with Lisa Klosterkötter, is on view at Temporary Gallery at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Cologne, Germany through Nov. 29. The exhibition presents “artistic practices undertaken in response to unjust, environmentally toxic and ableist structures.” Featuring works by Ren Loren Britton, Justyna Górowska, Anka Haller, Pia Lindman, Finnegan Shannon, Cecilia Vicuña, and Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen.
Journalist Shruti Rajkumar recently reported on disabled reporters’ concerns about newsrooms’ disability coverage and access featuring for The Objective.
Photo by Jake Mein. This week’s issue of The New Yorker includes a profile of Susan Te Kahurangi King, the disabled artist who has eschewed disability art and may be, writes Laura Preston, “New Zealand’s greatest living artist.”
CALLS
Applications are open for the Rauschenberg Medical Emergency Grants program, providing “one-time grants of up to $5,000 for recent unexpected medical, dental, and mental health emergencies to artists in financial need who are creating work in the visual arts, digital/electronic arts, video/film, and choreography.” Apply by Sept. 15.
The Inevitable Foundation’s Emergency Relief Fund is accepting applications from “disabled writers, filmmakers and writer-producers experiencing financial hardship.”
Requests are accepted on a rolling basis for The Squeaky Wheel’s $250 Community Microgrants for “small but crucial expenses.”
Cripple Punk Presents is seeking “Art, Stories, and Poetry focused all about the CPunk experience, especially focused on the History of the movement.”
Editors Devon Healey and Carolina Bergonzoni are seeking chapter proposals for an edited collection called Access as Art, Art as Access: Exploring Multiple Worlds through Disability-led Artistry and Perception in the Performing Arts. Submit by September 30.
Opulent Mobility is accepting submissions for its 2026 exhibition curated by A. Laura Brody with help from Anthony Tusler. Submit by September 30.
Unlimited’s Partner Awards will distribute £280,000 for the creation of new work to disabled artists and their partner organizations across England, Scotland, and Wales. Apply by September 28.