Art Exhibits Thursday and Friday, [at] Centennial Hall Prefunction Area
A. Laura Brody | Opulent Mobility
Le Flaneur
The goals of the Opulent Mobility exhibits are to bring artists, inventors and assistive technology users together to collaborate on the basic forms and aesthetics of adaptive technology.
Wheelchairs, walkers, prosthetic limbs, crutches and other such devices are part of either our lives or the lives of the people we love—if not now, then in our future. There is almost no personalization of these very personal machines and even fewer innovations in their presentation and design. There are myriad imaginative designs for glasses, chairs, vehicles and technology. Why is adaptive technology design left so far behind?
Most artwork dealing with mobility and disability is about the artist’s struggle or social issues of disability. Opulent Mobility takes a new approach: a personal and collaborative way of using art to celebrate the possibilities of adaptive technology.
The exhibit includes the following pieces: Jazzy Peacock Scooter and Le Flaneur.
Paisley Callow, UCLA Arts Alumna | INVALID! A Visual Invisible Disability Narrative
Migraine
One way an invisible disability, which is sometimes judged invalid, can become spectacle is as the interior is exteriorized through art. This art exhibit uses personal narrative to explore and critique visually the frustrations of disability identity boundaries and the peculiar issues raised when a bodily signifier that would bestow legitimacy is absent. The artist was injured when intense work on one of her creations precipitated a syndrome that required surgery and long term modification of her work methods. Her limitation seems invisible to everyone except thoracic surgeons who can detect an obvious obstruction to major nerve/vessel function. The artwork explores the emotional toll of avoiding or inviting “the stare” through disclosure, the variable body and pain that is the lived reality for those whose disabilities manifest episodically and the liminality between invisible disability, disclosure and misfitting. This art seeks to depict the complex secret struggle of invisible disability, which encompasses rejection, support, success and endless physical/emotional upheaval, so often simplified by popular media. Artworks include photography (of resected bone), x-ray photograms on metal, drawing and text.
The exhibit includes the following pieces: Kaleidoscopic Bones, Restraint, Within & Without, Migraine!, Neuropathy, Dem Bones, Xray Baggage, and Nausea.