Two projects by Sara Hendren (MDesS ‘13, researcher in the Program on Art and the Public Domain and fellow at metaLAB) are included in Disabled by Normality, an exhibit opening this week at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague. The show upends concepts of disability and normality through work by international artists with disabilities and those working in disability communities as well as work undertaken by artists imposing various restrictions.
Hendren’s Slope/Intercept is a meditation on the ramp or inclined plane, a static machine. In Unknown Armature/Body Socks she finds new uses for a therapeutic tool used by people with sensory processing disorders like autism.
Hendren describes the experience in her blog: “The sock is a kind of envelope over the wearer’s experience: She can see through the stretchy fabric, but she can’t be seen, and she can be enclosed while also exploring the world. The sock invites the wearer to push hard against its strong lycra, engaging its powerful resistance as an exercise, or a dance, or to engage an enemy proxy. It provides strong feedback and invisibility, an interior/exterior mediator for animated action.”
Read more about Disabled by Normality.