This week The New York Times published, I Dance Because I Can, a piece I wrote for their ongoing Disability Opinion series. I share in the piece what dancing feels like and why I make the artistic choices I make. In some ways, this was an opportunity to correct many of the assumptions that are made about my work and about the disability arts world as a whole (that dancing is therapeutic for me, or that the intent of disability art is to educate non-disabled people… NOPE!).
I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to tell my truth on such a widely read platform because there is often a pretty big gap between my truth and what gets published about me. In this moment of gratitude I also fully recognize there are many incredible disabled artists who have never appeared in The New York Times. I’m hungry– the world is hungry– for your stories, accounts, and work. We are hungry for your truth which has been shared in access networks and across the internet, but not always as a ‘primary source.’
Let’s utilize this wave of media attention and amplify our people and our stories.
The founders of Art + Feminism have made considerable progress in mobilizing citizen editors to focus on Wikipedia as a way of shining a light on artists that the mainstream press has not acknowledged. Throughout the month of March, Wikipedia Edit-a-thons will be held in communities around the world.
I invite you to nominate disabled artists who do not yet have a public record on Wikipedia (and should) or the names of artists who have an existing page, but it could be more thoroughly researched and cited with sources. NOMINATE HERE and FIND AN EVENT NEAR YOU.
These are the two upcoming events team members from Kinetic Light will be remotely participating in:
March 2 at MoMA in NYC. RSVP HERE & LIVESTREAM HERE
March 9 at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. RSVP HERE
