Support Structures
December 3, 2020 - December 31, 2023
Sandra Wazaz, What’s the word for worse than depression?, 2018. Video still. Courtesy of the artist. [Image Description: An image from the earth from space. Blue and turquoise lagoon shapes with bits of cloud scattered on top of them, they are the type of clouds that look like popcorn. Black text in the middle of the screen reads “to see if it will hold” and “my weight” underneath it. Text at the very top of image is cut off.]
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation is pleased to present support structures, a virtual group exhibition curated by danilo machado featuring artists from Art Beyond Sight’s Art and Disability Residency (ADR). The artists in the exhibition – Lizzy De Vita, Michael DiFeo, Zoey Hart, Terry Huber, Alex Dolores Salerno, michelle miles, e.e. miller, and Sandra Wazaz – consider the presence, absence, and maintenance of support structures as a catalyst for each of their practices across a range of media and disciplines. Originally conceived as an in-person exhibition at The 8th Floor gallery earlier this year, due to Covid-19 the artists have adapted and created new work, restructuring the physical exhibition into a virtual one.
Envisioning sustainable lives involves many kinds of support structures, whether physical and architectural, or social and emotional. These bolster the foundations upon which we build, nourish, and grow in our lives. Interdependency can become a site of creation, while also enabling individuals to support themselves and each other with responsibility and care. These gestures, often political, are central to Disability Justice, aesthetics, and community. Throughout this exhibition, the artists consider the many meanings of support and structure, centering on embodiment, language, and materiality.
Access to the virtual exhibition ended on December 31, 2023.
Bios
Lizzy De Vita is an artist, writer and educator who lives and works in Brooklyn. www.lizzydevita.us
Michael DiFeo is an interdisciplinary artist living in Jersey City. His work incorporates photography, animation, sound, and video. DiFeo has exhibited at SXSW, Photoville NYC, Pingyao International Photography festival in China, and Photo Auckland in New Zealand, and at The State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, Russia. He has also exhibited in several Bruce High Quality exhibitions, participated in the Jersey City Artist Studio tour, as well as the Billboard Art Project in a number of US cities. DiFeo received his undergrad degree at NJCU and received his MFA in the Photography and Related Media program at Parsons School of Design in ‘17. He now works as a commercial photographer and as a professor of Media Arts at New Jersey City University.
Alex Dolores Salerno is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Informed by themes of care, interdependency, and queer-crip temporality, they work to critique standards of productivity, normative embodiment and the commodification of our rest time. Salerno received their M.F.A. in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and their B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College. They have exhibited at the Ford Foundation Gallery, Franklin Street Works, Westbeth Gallery, Gibney Dance, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, among others. They have been an artist in residence at Trestle Art Space (2019) and are currently participating in Art Beyond Sight’s Art & Disability Residency Program (2019-2020).
Zoey Hart is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural educator based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Inspired by the misadventures of invisible disability and modern medicine, Hart’s work reframes the experience of chronic illness across cultures and environmental contexts. Combining traditional drawing and soft-sculpture techniques with alternative printmaking and social practice design, Hart creates images, sculptures and multimedia-installations that question our cultural perceptions of imperfection and wellbeing.
Terry Huber comes from a small town in rural Indiana called Batesville. He has a strong interest in many forms of spiritual practices, such as Christianity, Buddhism, Lakota, Nature has always been at the heart of his work. Growing up in rural Indiana taught him how to connect with a deeper sense of purpose at the heart of creation and life itself.
michelle miles is a multi-media artist whose work is informed and conceptually underpinned by her experience as a disabled woman. She recently held a year-long position in accessibility at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is now studying design and innovation in digital accessibility. miles’ work has screened at festivals including the Sundance Film Festival and the LA Film Festival, and was recognized at the Kennedy Center in July 2020 for the 30th anniversary of the ADA.
ee miller is a painter, walker and an astrologer.
Sandra Wazaz currently lives in Brooklyn with their cat Bean.
Art Beyond Sight (ABS) empowers disabled people to be active, creative, and powerful participants and contributors in the arts and society at large. As a catalyst for equitable change, ABS fosters collaboration and exploration of innovative, effective, and impactful solutions to realize full inclusion. artbeyondsight.wordpress.com
ABS’s Art and Disability Residency strives to give artists and arts professionals choice and intentionality about what role, if any, disability plays in their work and its place in the critical conversation of contemporary art. This exhibition was supported with funds from the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation through its art and social justice initiative.
support structures logo: Samantha Benvissuto
