The Voices and Impact of Disabled Women in Visual Art

By Georgia Achilles

The voices of disabled women are often silenced and their experiences hidden. When recognized, their identities are often viewed separately, and the intricate intersections of womanhood and disability are ignored. Through artistic mediums like drawing, painting, and sculpture, many disabled women have expressed their intersectional identities and experiences. These expressions have the power to represent disabled women, appreciate the beauty of disabled womanhood, and advocate for more positive systems and social standards which can make the lives of disabled women more equitable. The experiences of disabled women are complex and diverse, and translate to beautiful art with major influence.

Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan. She works in many mediums, from painting to photography to sculpture. Her works center diverse subjects including animals, landscapes, people, and often pumpkins. Her artwork is easily recognizable due to her signature avante-garde style, which is marked by bold colors, organic shapes, and polka dots. Her pumpkin motif was influenced by her formative experiences on her family’s farm, where she came to recognize them as having a “humorous form” and “human-like quality”. Her use of polka dots is linked to the use of repetition in art therapy, and is used as “a way to infinity”, melding people and objects with the universe. Her immersive, engaging artwork has made her one of the first women artists to name and replicate mental illness in her work. Her childhood in a chaotic, abusive household led her to develop obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenic hallucinations. Her expression and view of mental illness often intersects with ideas of womanhood as she explores how the female experience has impacted her mental health.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1967, Lois Curtis was an incredibly influential American artist and activist. As a child, Curtis was diagnosed with cognitive and developmental disabilities, which, combined with anti-Blackness in federal systems, led to her involuntary placement in psychiatric hospitals, jails, and other often inadequate institutions. While confined in these institutions, she was often sedated rather than productively treated, which deeply impacted her mental and physical wellbeing. In her adult life, Curtis became a leader in the disability rights movement, and eventually became the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case L.C. vs. Olmstead. Ruling in favor of Curtis, the court decided that “the unjustified segregation of people with disabilities is a form of unlawful discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act”, and that whenever possible, public entities and institutions must provide community-based services to persons with disabilities. Beyond her activism, Curtis was an artist who worked in acrylic paint and pastels, creating primarily portraits of friends and family. Her artwork is compositionally simplistic, yet bold in color and texture. Her portraits often recognize other disabled women who are rarely represented in artwork, humanizing and honoring them and their experiences.