Dear Ms. Jones and members of the avant-garde listserv (and members of DR
listening in):
I have the great dishonor of having been subjected to reading the article
on the censoring of Laura Ferguson, The article smacks of centuries-old
stereotypes and rhetoric surrounding disability experience -- that being
disabled is a tragic experience that an individual must overcome; that
one's body is no longer whole, and that one's life is therefore
diminished -- the very stereotypes that Ms. Ferguson's art, it seems to
me, strives to dispel. Look at the words: "affliction" "overcome"
"sufferer" and on and on... As someone who is disabled and who traffics in
the study of disability culture, I'll admit, I've had to overcome a lot;
most notably society's stares and prejudices that my body is ugly and that
my life is not worth living. Maybe you think I'm annoyed at nothing, or at
least mad at the inappropriate party. That may be, but as you strive to
understand one's art, and to work on your own, I'd ask you to consider how
disability is painted, and whether that's the only story worthy of expression.
Best,
Johnson Cheu
At 12:09 AM 4/20/01 +0100, you wrote:
>>I have the great honor of announcing that one of ETAOIN's
>>artists, Laura Ferguson, has been censored by a committee of
>>the U.S. Senate. It's true the writ doesn't run very far --
>>the compass of Russell rotunda -- but one guesses they're
>>doing what they can. Here's the story:
>>
>>Some time ago, Laura Ferguson was invited to participate in
>>an art exhibition, actual and virtual, sponsored by the American
>>Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Laura is affected by scoliosis;
>>art is one of the ways she deals with her predicament. As she
>>says in a statement published on ETAOIN,
>>
>> We experience the world through our bodies, and the singularity
>> of each life experience gives its story, its meaning, but also
>> threatens to trap us in the isolation of self. I became
>> interested in the visual imagery of the body's interior because
>> of my own physical differentness, caused by scoliosis, a
>> deformity of the spine and rib cage. My body's asymmetry
>> creates the need for a subtle effort of balancing, in my
>> physical relationship to gravity and space, and in my psychic
>> sense of centeredness and wholeness. The conscious awareness
>> of bodily processes that usually unfold by themselves has made
>> me finely attuned to my bones and muscles, nerves and senses,
>> like a dancer. With a brush or pencil or crayon as an extension
>> of my hand, I have sought to find a voice, a process, through
>> which my body could express this awareness in visual form.
>> ( http://www.etaoin.com/fersta.htm )
>>
>>Or, as another participant in the show, Allison Berman,
>>remarked, "When I paint, I am no longer controlled by my pain
>>or disability." In Laura's case, as we can see, the pain and
>>disability have become not only a problem to overcome but a
>>mode of knowedge many of us do not experience, not just
>>a transcendence but an assumption, an encompassing, a
>>going-beyond that takes the way along with it.
>>
>>Laura and Laura's part of the exhibition can be seen at
>>http://emotionpictures.aaos.org/ferguson2.html .
>>
>>Many people who have seen this exhibition have been profoundly
>>moved by it. Most importantly, it has given courage and hope
>>to others who are similarly afflicted, especially children.
>>One mother who took her daughter, also a sufferer from scoliosis,
>>to the exhibition wrote to Laura to tell her that her daughter,
>>hitherto somewhat discouraged, had been electrified by Laura's
>>work and was planning to become an artist herself.
>>
>>After being seen in San Francisco, the exhibition was to travel
>>to Washington, where it was going to be installed in the
>>Senate's Russell office building. But as the _Washington
>>Post's_ Lloyd Grove reports (in part),
>>
>> The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons has pulled a scheduled
>> art exhibit from the Russell Senate Office Building after the Senate
>> Rules Committee censored paintings of naked women and their skeletal
>> systems. The paintings, by scoliosis-suffering artist Laura Ferguson,
>> were among around 40 works in "eMotion Pictures: An Exhibition of
>> Orthopaedics in Art," which had been set for display April 23-27 in
>> the Russell rotunda.
>> ...
>>
>> Tamara Somerville, staff director for Senate Rules Committee Chairman
>> Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), told us that staffers rejected Ferguson's art
>> because it featured nudity. "We make no bones about it, we do censor,"
>> Somerville said. "We are not an art museum. Nobody's entitled to
>> display anything."
>>
>> Rather than remove Ferguson's paintings from the exhibit, the
>> organization opted to move it to Southwest Washington's Millennium
>> Arts Center, where 100 pieces will be on display April 23 to May 26.
>> Svetlana Mintcheva, arts advocacy project coordinator for the National
>> Coalition Against Censorship, decried the Senate's act: "We are not
>> even talking frontal nudity or a desire to provoke. What next? Put
>> Michelangelo's 'David' in the closet, shame Venus into a frock?" [1]
>>
>>Actually, it was apparently quite an accomplishment for Mr.
>>Grove to get a straight answer out of the Senate Rules Committee
>>staff; unlike the Taliban, they were quite coy about their
>>dislike of images of the human body and it was very difficult
>>to get any sort of explanation out of them. But now that
>>they've owned up to the C-word, we can proceed. As Laura told
>>reporter Grove,
>>
>> "It just seems a shame. ... There's a discomfort that people
>> have with someone who has a less than perfect body being sensual.
>> Disabled people, if they want to be accepted, have to be saintly
>> and cheery."
>>
>>This, I think, is probably the heart of the Senate Rules
>>Committee staff's objection to these particular pictures.
>>Part of the oppression of the disabled is that many people do
>>not wish them to be visible, or, if they are visible at all,
>>they are not to be sensual, sexy, attractive, beautiful. The
>>precise conjunction of potential eroticism (implicit in every
>>human body) together with an abnormality, a disability which
>>had been challenged, overcome, even built upon, was too much
>>for them, no doubt especially those who are looking over their
>>shoulders in fear of reactionary constituencies. To the extent
>>they could, then, they deprived people like the young woman
>>mentioned above of a chance to live more fully -- maybe even
>>to live at all. And so we see, more clearly than usual, the
>>death-dealing nature of the repressive mentality and its
>>politics -- comfortable with war, money and prisons, frightened
>>away by the common truth of flesh and bone.
>>
>>But regardless of the U.S. Senate, you can see Laura's work
>>now on the ETAOIN website at
>>
>> http://www.etaoin.com/fer0.htm
>>
>>and on the AAOS's website at
>>
>> http://emotionpictures.aaos.org
>>
>>[1] The news story can be found at
>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/columns/reliablesource/A25590-2
>>001Apr16.html
>>
>>--
>>
>>
>> }"{ G*rd*n }"{ [log in to unmask] }"{
>>{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 2/25/01 <-adv't
>>
>>
>> --- from list [log in to unmask] ---
>
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