RE/FORMATIONS

The Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College will present the first exhibition to address the intersection between disability identity and female identity in RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture. On view from January 16 – February 27, 2009, five female artists, four of whom are disabled, will exhibit sculpture that examines disability not as mental or physical insufficiency limited to a small minority, but as a widespread and diffuse cultural identity, like race or sexual orientation. This is not art as therapy or rehabilitation. It is art emerging from within disability culture that is at once activist and aesthetically innovative.

RE/FORMATIONS fills a critical gap in the national discussion on disability. Why is it important that the disabled and non-disabled women featured in RE/FORMATIONS explore structures of normalcy – bodily, sexual, gendered, sculptural? What happens when disabled women, doubly "othered" in mainstream society by virtue of their gender and physicality, choose to explore that intersection in the historically male-dominated medium of sculpture, a medium that traditionally demands physical strength and significant financial means?

Negligee (Serotonin)
Fan (Anatomy of the Gaze)
Handkerchief (Anatomy of Tears)
Purse
Gloves
Doilies
Subcutaneous