Jenny Cox, Black and White, 2016, marker on paper, 18" x 24", courtesy Center for Creative Works
Neurodiversity in Contemporary Art
Wednesday, March 7th, 7 - 8:30pm Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania
VCAM, Screening Room 001
Disparate Minds co-founders Tim Ortiz and Andreana Donahue discuss current concerns at the intersection of art and disability studies while highlighting neurodivergent artists’ contributions to the contemporary art discourse. In the interest of progressing past trends in writing and exhibition typically associated with the now obsolete Outsider Art designation, Donahue and Ortiz trace a gradual paradigm shift over the past twenty years - the convergence of artists making work in facilitated art studios with an increasingly pluralistic art world.
Join us in the VCAM Screening Room 001 for conversation and light refreshments - free and open to the public.
This event is part of a Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives (PACC) project called We’re In it (Remaking the World). This collaborative group consists of artist Samantha Mitchell; Lori Bartol, Director, Center for Creative Works; Kristin Lindgren, Director of College Writing Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of Independent College Programs, Haverford College; Lindgren’s course, ‘Critical Disability Studies: Theory and Practice;’ Adam Rosenblatt, Visiting Assistant Professor, and Coordinator, Peace, Justice & Human Rights, Haverford College; Rosenblatt’s course, ‘Thinking Differently: Politics and Practices of Neurodiversity;’ and Stephanie Bursese, PACC Program Manager, Haverford College. Learning about artists through their art – and vice versa – we seek to create an open forum for conversation that engages concepts of disability, neurodiversity, narrative voice, art writing, and book-making. How do we rethink the problematic term “outsider art” and reconsider how all of us move between “inside” and “outside”? How do we build relationships, one-on-one and across communities, that contribute to this reimagining? This project connects institutions of higher education, art studios, and local and national arts organizations. Building narratives and relationships through speech, drawing, and the written word, we aim to find common ground, build access across boundaries of space and difference, and bring both art-making and storytelling into ethical visions that remake the world.