The space where lived experience of disability embodiments happen, 2021
Disability Definitions and Regulations, 2021
To what extent does institutional definitions of disability influence or determine disabilities existence outside of institutions?, 2021
Digital prints on paper
406.40 x 558.8mm
This series of hand-drawn Venn diagrams indicates how experiences of disability are impacted by systemic institutional ableism. Each diagram visualises the way disability is disproportionately defined by institutions and social norms rather than being defined by people who have a lived experience of disability. For instance, the first two diagrams in the series indicate that the experience of disability mostly exists outside of its intersection with medical classifications and processes. Despite this, however, official systems maintain a central position in the diagrams, indicating that institutions hold an authoritative power over what constitutes ‘disability’. This position is further emphasised in the last of the three diagrams, which pictures institutional power as a large, ever-increasing circle enveloping a much smaller circle representing disability. These works provide a representation of the social model of disability which promotes the understanding that it is the barriers embedded within society that disable people and not their impairments or deficits.