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Art and artists: How artists who experience disability celebrate humanity. By Dr Olivia Karaolis
Anxiety - an acrylic painting on canvas depicting a gathering of organic shapes of light blue, beige, red and brown twisting and binding with each other on a mottled dark blue background
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hiannon Pegler, an artist who experiences disability has been named artist in residence at the Newington Armory at Sydney Olympic Park. This residency has been made possible through Accessible Arts in partnership with Sydney Olympic Park Authority and the first residency that Sydney Olympic Park Authority offered exclusively for artists with disability. Residencies are a highly sought opportunities for artists to create and showcase their work. Pegler’s work explores what is beneath the surface - to encourage the viewer to look beyond the surface, her process involves collecting natural objects and examining them under a microscope before she translates them onto the canvas. Her recent work “Anxiety” makes connections with organic shapes to express powerful feelings through
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February/March 2022
the body and make connections between the body and the mind. It is a piece many can relate to, anxiety, as with other powerful feelings can be hard to understand, a powerful emotion that can overwhelm us. Art can help make sense of our experiences, to make the unfamiliar less strange and bring about new ways of making meaning of our feelings and ourselves. We realise that these feelings are shared and through the creative arts, we share them with others, through a painting, a film, theatre and music. It is why art is so important. It is why having artwork, by artists with disability recognised is so important. Art connects us and helps us to see the things we share as part of our common humanity. The world of those that
experience disability, and those that do not experience disability, are not binary. By its nature, art is inclusive. When you look at a painting by Frieda Kahlo, Rhiannon Pegler, Keith Salmon or Chuck Close, listen to Mozart, Stevie Wonder or Sia, watch a film with Tom Cruise or theatre in New York with Alexandria Wailes, we think of their power as an artist, it shifts our perception of disability. The artists and their work are at the front and centre and not the margins. Dr Olivia Karaolis teaches at Sydney University Faculty of Education and Social Work. She was Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Early Childhood Education, Santa Monica College, California.