UKK warmly invites you to a dialogue meeting to address issues faced by artists, curators, and art workers with disabilities. The meeting is organized in a collaboration with artist and writer Anthony Dexter Giannelli and art student Victor Vejle.
As we’ve returned again to a physically centered art world, we want to ensure that these spaces are accessible to all; that we work to create a better environment for the physically disabled, who face greater obstacles and barriers to gaining resources, opportunities and navigating the art scene here in Denmark. The meeting is the first step to gather artists and art workers facing the same and/or similar issues, to get a better understanding of relevant questions and focus areas, and also interested participants to work together within a future working group.
During the meeting we will discuss and reflect on the current state and needs of the disabled within the Danish art field through increased opportunities and resources available to disabled artists, better accessibility to the local cultural community both in physical terms and network building, adequacy of work rights and social benefits (i.e. flex job as a disabled artist with freelance work), advocating for public understanding and visibility of disabled issues.
We invite artists and art workers with disabilities/physical limitations/chronic illness to attend. Non-disabled persons are also welcome to join but we ask for a short specification of your connection/motivation in working with this topic.
Our mission is to create better opportunities for artists and art workers to have access to opportunities and be able to take part in cultural life at the many inaccessible spaces that still exist in private gallery spaces and publicly funded art institutions that should cater to all. We need to address the outdated and insufficient guidelines (new guidelines or audits from the cultural ministry have not been done since 1997) that govern accessibility and dictate whether or not we as disabled persons have a right to a successful life in the arts. This needs to be done through changes to both physically access these spaces and having the freedom to operate our precarious careers without putting our needed accommodations such as flex jobs in jeopardy.
Please sign up to: info@ukk.community no later than 23th November.
You are also welcome to contact us if you are unable to attend the meeting but are interested in learning more or perhaps want to join the working group.
Anthony Dexter Giannelli is a visual artist and writer exploring themes of mobility, visibility, and otherness, taken from his own position in society as physically disabled and non-majority. His visual practice is centered on a deeply personal journey battling to be seen and to find strength and resilience through an immobilizing physical condition. In recent efforts, he is especially motivated by the explosion of accessible resources in the arts during the pandemic while ensuring these efforts continue in the post-pandemic environment, as expressed in his article, A World of Barriers: Questioning Access for Disabled Artists and Audiences.
Victor Vejle is currently studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,his work is based on ongoing research of how, or if disability and injuries can be linked to changes in the contemporary art scene and in society in general. Victor uses his own experiences to question the structural downgrading of disabled and injured bodies and their existences in modern-day society. Through various media including installation and video, Victor questions if it is possible to change the social and institutional placement of bodies between normal functioning or broken, and how these categories should be erased and replaced with the diverse shades of what we consider as normality or functionality.
Scott William Raby is an artist, researcher, and arts organizer. His artistic practice utilizes self-organization, art-as-soft-infrastructure, and community focused public engagement, a.o. to create new interactions between artists and society. Themes such as socio-political amelioration, existential social crises (e.g. economy, climate, gentrification, etc.), and reconfiguring operations of power are often explored through performativity, social installations, public interventions, and dialogical exchanges. He co-organizes various platforms and projects such as f.eks in Aalborg, Danmark.
The event is organised by Anthony Dexter Giannelli, Victor Vejle, Maj Horn, Katja Crevar and Felis Dos.
Thank you to Kunsthal Charlottenborg and VinSuperNaturel for their generous support.