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Human Being in a Disabled Version

 

Equal Justice Resident and visual artist, Gaëtane Cummings, will be exhibiting her work May 17—May 20, 7-9pm, at SFAI in collaboration with North Fourth Art Center of Albuquerque.

Gaëtane describes this project as having two aspects that are in constant interaction.

The first aspect is relative to the norm that freezes people in their differences. How can a person with a disability define his/her identity and blend into our societies, while, in most of the world, we still consider it to be below the social norm?
Her pictorial representation of this fact is a central painting with multiple small paintings that revolve around, and speak to, the tyranny of the norm. Some disabled artists from the North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, will be joining the exhibition with a series of artworks around the same theme.

The second aspect is an installation that demonstrates the situation of people with disabilities in Montreal, Canada, where they are forty years behind the U.S. in regulation, leading to a lack of universal accessibility. Of course, many people with disabilities experience the same difficulties in countries around the world even though the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations intended to protect the rights and dignity of the people with disabilities. Parties of the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of Human Rights by people with disabilities and ensure that they enjoy full equality under the law. New York: United Nations, December 13th 2006.

This exhibit will also present a fifteen-minute-video that shares the views of Montreal activists with disabilities, and it will provide a better understanding of the current state of the situation in 2018. These activists will also talk about the Capacitism (Ableism).

In February 2014, the Faculty Association of Arts Students ( AFÉA )  of the UQAM ( University of Quebec in Montreal ) took a stand against capacitism:

“Capacitism is a form of discrimination or unfavorable judgment against people with disabilities. The Capacitian system of values, strongly influenced by the field of medicine, places the person capable, without disability, as the social norm. People who do not comply with this standard should attempt to comply. In this system of values, disability is an error, a lack, a failure, and not a consequence of diversity within humanity.”

This event is free and open to the public.