Adapted: Investigating what is gained in function but lost in identity when AT is prescribed and how Art can help push back against medicalisation.
A large component of Adapted is its community activation component DecorATe.
DecorATe Your AT. Your choice. Your story
DecorATe is all about community and flipping the script on assistive technology. Instead of focusing on what a body can't do, we celebrate the choices people make! We're bringing the community together to decorate an everyday item that helps get through the day, in whatever style feels like them.
About me: Chloe Wigg
I am a retired Paramedic, Artist and AT user.
Adapted is my passion project. Inviting Assistive Technology (AT) users, those with invisible disabilities/ chronic illness, carers, loved ones and the community as a whole to come together for free and celebrate Art, choice and community.
I want individuals to come and decorate an every day item. Something that helps them get out and about, that might be AT, or an item of clothing, or an accessory.
There's a subtle but powerful shift at the heart of DecorATe: moving away from why someone needs an aid, to how good it looks.
I noticed it myself. When my condition is less noticeable and I could get by with a walking stick, people would ask me "What have you done to yourself?" kind and predictable interactions, but ones that always started with what was wrong with me.
When I use my fancy light up cane, the questions were so very different "Wow where did you get that stick?" "You should put a torch in that to make it light up!" and so on.
It made me realise that individual style/ art and creativity can help reshape public conversations and encourage connection as equals.
That's what Adapted is about.
Not making space in the margins to celebrate the marginalized, bringing everyone into the center and celebrating together. Not using language focused on "deficit", instead celebrating an individuals choice.
Adapted takes all the wonderful learning's from the DecorATe workshops to form the basis of an immersive celebratory exhibition. The scale of which will depend on funds raised but will include a historical research on art and AT in Australia, story telling, photography and sculptural assemblage.
Adapted - AusArt Day fundraiser
Adapted is a two-year arts and disability project asking what is gained in function and lost in identity when a body is medicalised, and how art can help an individual reclaim their style and image. Led by artist and Assistive Technology user Chloe Wigg, the project moves from the ground up: community workshops where AT users decorate their devices and tell their stories (Titled DecorATe), oral history recordings, a celebratory photography session and fashion parade, and historical research into how AT has been used and represented in Australia over time. These threads converge in an immersive touring exhibition: portraiture, sculpture, decorated AT and storytelling, that turns a story usually told about disabled people into one told by them.
$0 raised
0 donations
0%
Amount
$20
$50
$100
$1,000
Other
0/100
Comment (optional)