HELD is an immersive visual-tactile co-solo exhibition by Anna Camilleri and Wy Joung Kou, presented by Tangled Art + Disability in partnership with ReDefine Arts, from November 17, 2023 to January 26, 2024. Composed of multiple works within a shared ecosystem, the exhibition included: ceramic and glass mosaic, installation, pebble mosaic sculpture, video, audio, and interaction. Reimagining the gallery as a co-created and invitational space, HELD asked: What futures await our queer, disabled bodies? What sustainable futures can we co-create together?
HELD - Closing Celebration, January 19, 2024. Tangled Art + Disability, Toronto, ON. Photo by Felicia Byron.
As part of HELD, artists Wy Joung Kou and Anna Camilleri crafted a collective poem, combining their own contributions with reflections from community members collected over the course of the exhibit, responding to the prompt “What visions for disability futures do you hold close or carry forward?”. A reading of this poem took place at the closing celebration along with a performance from The Epic Choir.
This poem was created by Kou and Camilleri in collaboration with contributions from Aaron Beaumont, Birdie, Carmelle Adam, C.R., Katerina Obscura, Kt, Michel Dumont, Ro Della-Picca, Sevie, TAGatsby, and many other community members who wish to remain anonymous. Thank you for embodying the collaborative spirit of the abundant disability futures that hold us all.
No Apologies, A Tender Approach:
We Will be Loved
Disability futures are abundant
Unwashed laundry, half-written letters,
Life in a perpetual state of being and becoming
Acceptance of all ways of being
because we are and have always been here
We are a choir of rushing wind and water
of falling snowflakes and breath
fireweed and pine needles
We are born of places where there is utility
and beauty even in that which is fragile
even in that which is broken and re-made
A mosaic of shimmering circles, spiraling
composing infinite beauty and variability
Whole universes where all are welcomed
with banquet tables, dim lights, and blankets
shallow bowls yawning wide for a hot meal
tea cups clinking like coins when they kiss
a clean spoon for the first course, the second and the third
Disability futures, this messy life
are eager to see me in the morning
low to the ground with a strong jaw
and a voracious appetite
brave, gentle, and trusting
Disability futures are soft as velvet
and tender as the palm of my hand
as a bare belly
as naked feet tippy toeing across a gravel road
to meet a friend’s arms on the other side
Disability futures are quiet walks
lit by lamp posts and moonlight
Wheatpasting in the shadows,
instigators of a revolution clever enough
to turn access intimacy into second nature
and first priority
Disability futures are insistent
brilliant and enduring
The first flowers to bloom after a fire
making friends with ashen ghosts
In a vision of all the worlds within us
Careful and considerate
painful yet liberatory
attuned to what is precious in life
or what is precious life
Disability futures remember government halls
echoing with chants
We will be loved by all those who matter
I release my belief that love is scarce
We dream of a future in which we are chosen
a future born of collective re-imagining
of a reckoning, queer and crip
Do you feel tired?
Me too, but that is ok.
There are no apologies for the bodies we inhabit
Not who we could have been, but who we are
Disability futures know the future is promised
to no one but if it were promised,
we would be in it, I would be in it
Disability futures remake the world,
One with multitudes, dropped threads, nuance, creases, flux
a tender approach
a basket full of fidgets waiting for warm hands
where difference is not deficit
where each new generation remakes the meaning of abundance
where the loving embrace of freedom becomes a vessel
to weep in
to carry, to hold, to release
***
On December 7, 2023, Camilleri and Kou were interviewed by OCAD University student Robbie Cabutaje to discuss disability, queerness, intersectionality, and their artistic practices. The following excerpt is taken from that interview:
Robbie: Your practices mutually intersect with disability, queerness, activism, and collaboration-based work. How did you get interested in this multidisciplinary mode of practice?
Anna: I remember looking around in academic and arts and culture environments and I just didn’t see the people from my (cultural and working class) communities reflected. For me, that was a realization of wanting to do community work with people who weren’t necessarily studying art, and people who weren’t necessarily included or recognized as part of the conventional cultural dialogue, spaces, or artistic experiences.
Robbie: As a way of giving agency back to artists from communities who have been marginalized (based on race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc.), what does identity and intersectionality mean to you and its significance on your respective practices? Furthermore, could you share how your understandings of identity and positionality have changed over the course of your careers?
Wy-J: I think the reasons why I still self-identify as X, Y, and Z is that queerness and disability are not always visible; it’s a way for me to communicate a little bit about who I am and maybe why I make art, but not necessarily the content of my art. For me, self-identifying as a disabled artist or queer artist is more about saying what my art is not, versus what it is. What grounds my practice in many ways is shared experiences, whether it’s of oppression, joy, etc.
Anna: How I relate to my identity and positionality has changed over time. To give you a sense of the late 80s and the early 90s, there was a big leaning towards androgyny in queer women communities (terms that I struggle with); what that actually meant was adopting heteromasculinity. There was a strong misogynistic undercurrent experienced by people who were femme-presenting and I would say that is still true to some extent. It was important for me to identify myself as a queer femme when working in queer communities. As for intersectionality, these different aspects of identity are not separate, but sometimes I feel annoyed about the many fixed descriptions — they show up when works are considered by curators or programmers who are actively looking for, for example, a racialized or disabled or queer artist to balance out their programming. It’s been a bit of a dance of wanting to be seen and understood as I see and understand myself, as well as wanting to be found by other community members.
Robbie: Because both of you are highly active within the disability community — as artists, mentors, and activists — how would you describe your approaches to curation, community engagement, and artistic production?
Wy-J: I would say the first word that comes up for me is “responsive”, which is a huge theme in the context of community public art projects that Anna and I have done together. And a central component to our work is trying to create a project or model that is responsive to the needs and desires of the people or communities that we work with. When I think about Anna and I’s recent exhibit (at Tangled Art Gallery), HELD, responsiveness is based on a relationship that is always changing and growing.
Anna: There is overlap between curation, community engagement, and artistic production. The first word that comes to my mind is also responsiveness. In the community-engaged projects that I've worked on with Wy-J and other artists, what we're trying to do is move the needle on social issues, though I wouldn’t say that is prioritized over the art practice — they are two interwoven strands that cannot exist without each other. Art-making lives in a social context and set of relationships while community engagement is part of the cultural production and body of knowledge that is being built. There is a lot of care required in building a project or model that is responsive. The goal is not extraction — to take something away from the community and then frame and present it — but rather to build something that comes out of a relational process.
***
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Robbie Cabutaje is a student from Tkarón:to studying curatorial practice and social sciences at OCAD University. Inspired by his lived experience with mental illness, Robbie is interested in exploring the intersection between disability, cultural production, and curation. When he’s not lost in his thoughts, he can be found reading (and maybe writing) about history, anthropology, arts, travel, and madness.