On Interdependence: A Virtual Discussion Focused on the Theme of Access Ecologies in Families and Communities
What does it mean to depend on someone else and whose responsibility is access anyway? This virtual program looks at interdependence in relationships and within communities,engaging disability justice and disability rights activists, scholars and artists.
About the Presenters
Christopher Robert Jones is an artist and writer based in Illinois. Their research revolves around the “failure” or “malfunctioning” of the body and how those experiences are situated at points of intersection between Queer and Crip* discourses. They are currently a Specialized Faculty in the Studio Art program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Kristin Lantz (she/they) is an artist and curator whose work is concerned with the cultural implications of caregiving. Before becoming a mother on September 7, 2018, she was the programs coordinator at Gallery Gachet, a collectively-run space in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that is dedicated to demystifying issues related to mental health and social marginalization. With over 15 years of experience in supportive roles at art spaces such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Museum of Vancouver and the Purple Thistle Centre, Kristin currently works with her partner Carmen Papalia as a collaborator and arts manager.
Carmen Papalia (he/him) is a nonvisual social practice artist with chronic and episodic pain. In 2021 he co-founded the Open Access Foundation for Arts & Culture (OAFAC), a pandemic-era cultural organization that aims to set a new cultural standard for accessibility by nurturing creative and justice-oriented accessibility practices.
Since 2009 Papalia has used organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, art institutions and visual culture. His work, which takes forms ranging from collaborative performance to public intervention, is an effort to establish welcoming spaces where disabled, sick and chronically ill people can build capacity for care that they lack on account of governmental failure and medical ableism.
Liza Sylvestre is a multimedia artist whose work has been shown at venues internationally. Previously been artist-in-residence at the Weisman Art Museum and the Center for Applied and Translational Sensory Science (CATSS), Sylvestre is currently Curator of Academic Programs at Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. In 2019 she received a Citizens Advocate Award from the Minnesota Commission of the Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing (MNCDHH). Sylvestre’s work has been written about in Art in America, Mousse Magazine, Ocula Magazine, Art Monthly, and SciArt Magazine.
