July is Disability Pride month!!.
It is regularly celebrated in USA, but still relatively new here in Australia.
(It is in July, because the ADA - Americans with Disabilities Act, was first signed on 26 July 1990.)
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| 'Thinking of you', Linocut, screen print, and found postage stamp, Edition of 8, 12x12cm |
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| backside of the artwork |
To welcome in this year’s Pride month, I made this new artwork, with new invented postmarks.
The postmark on the back uses the Australia Post logo and one of their designs, but changes the wording to incorporate one of the disability rights slogans ‘Piss on pity’.
Disability Pride is about being proud of our lives and celebrating human diversity. It is also being proud of our struggle to resist ableism and speak back to attitudes of charity and pity.
This small artwork will be exhibited in Queensland in August at Umbrella Contemporary Arts gallery. Yay!
It has taken me ages to make this post, because things have been a bit chaotic in my life with few spare spoons this month whilst in a chronic pain/fatigue crash. This is mostly due to the ongoing difficulties in accessing the supports I need, mostly due to the impacts of Covid. But knowing it is Disability Pride Month and the history of disabled activism that has led to this moment, has brought me comfort. It has also given me extra permission to not get so down on myself for being ‘too emotional’, or not reading the signs well and upsetting others, as well as not meeting my obligations and commitments. Being hard on myself like this, is an expression of ‘internalised ableism’. Thus, Disability Pride is also about recognising when we enact ableism upon ourselves, and remembering that this is related to systemic, cultural ways of thinking that believes that disabled people are lesser. And we are not!
Disability Pride is also about finding ways to be kind to ourselves and each other.
Here’s to all disabled people across the world. I am thinking of you!
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