Opulent Mobility
Opening Panel & Reception

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required.

RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
What does it mean to center disability in arts practice and aesthetics? Opulent Mobility is a vibrant group exhibition at the Hoyt Gallery that spotlights artists whose works answer this question by reframing and recalibrating conventional approaches to disability and chronic illness. Now in its ninth year and being shown for the first time at USC, Opulent Mobility will include a rich collection of pieces across diverse media including photography, painting, sculpture, mixed media, and video to offer new models of beauty, interdependence, and care.

The opening will include a conversation at the Mayer Auditorium featuring curators A. Laura Brody and Anthony Tusler, artist Patricia Fortlage, and occupational therapist and Limitless Dance co-founder Debbie Wang, moderated by USC professor Julie Van Dam. They will address the pertinence of disability art practice to disability ethics and aesthetics.

The panel will be accompanied by live ASL translation, and all art descriptions will be available in a Braille booklet. A reception in the gallery will follow.
 

Bios:

A. Laura Brody is an artist and curator who sculpts for the human body and its vehicles. She founded and co-curates Opulent Mobility, a series of exhibits that reimagine disability and chronic illness as opulent and powerful. Her art has been shown at the Ikouii Creative, ACE/121 Gallery, Brea Gallery, Charles River Museum of Industry, Westbeth Center for the Arts, California State University at Northridge, Gallery Expo, Dora Stern Gallery at Arts Unbound, and World of WearableArt. Brody works as a professional costume maker and designer, artist, and educator. She is passionate about reuse, sustainability, and reimagining disability and chronic illness.

Patricia Fortlage is an award-winning documentary and fine art photographer whose most recent series is an autobiographical chronicle of her chronic illnesses. From her powerful piece covering the female-led Othakarhaka Foundation in Southern Malawi, to the stereotype-breaking, female-empowering Wonder, girl! campaign, to an ongoing series depicting the often-lifelong after-effects of sexual assault on women, Fortlage has promoted female empowerment one project at a time. She has documented conditions and shared stories of struggle and success, helped promote tourism in the poorest of nations, and devoted her artistic work to furthering community development.

Anthony Tusler is a wheelchair-using writer, photographer, and community organizer who advocates for disability culture and better access to disability in the arts, public health, and technology. The founding director of the Disability Resource Center at Sonoma State University and co-curator of Opulent Mobility, Tusler has helped to launch a number of nonprofits, written curricula, and taught classes on disability. Tusler served as coordinator of the technology policy division at the World Institute on Disability. He produced and co-curated the first major art show with disability as the subject matter, Disability and the Arts, and his photography appeared in the Oscar-nominated documentary, Crip Camp.

Julie Van Dam (moderator) is a USC professor of French who teaches courses on disability, narratives of illness, bodily difference, gender, and sexuality in African and French contexts. Her book, Critical Conditions: Illness and Disability in Francophone African and Caribbean Women’s Writing, engages with the fields of postcolonial studies, feminist theory, anthropology, disability studies, and the history of medicine to argue for a new critical reading of health and bodily difference in Francophone literature by women. She has published in the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s & Gender Studies, and Disability Studies Quarterly. Her current research project and publications focus on feminist decolonization of healthcare and crip care across various media from Francophone Africa and the diaspora.

Debbie Wang is an occupational therapist and co-founder of Limitless Dance, a Los Angeles–based community organization with a mission to promote the concept that anybody can dance, anywhere, anytime—regardless of age, experience, or ability. Their small vision to start a local hospital-based dance program has became a dream to change the entire dance community and the world!

Related events:

Reimagining Disability Narratives through Artistic Practice
A Lecture by A. Laura Brody
September 24, 2024, at 12:30 p.m.
Taper Hall 301
For more info, click HERE.

Opulent Mobility Art Exhibition
Wednesday, September 25 to Friday, October 25, 2024
Hoyt Gallery, Health Sciences Campus
For more info, click HERE.

Gender, Queerness, Disability, and the Arts
A Conversation with A. Laura Brody and Brontë Grimm
Tuesday, October 1, 2024, at 11 a.m.
Taper Hall 309K
For more info, click HERE.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Pamela Schaff (Medical Education, Family Medicine, and Pediatrics), Julie Van Dam (French and Italian), Erika Wright (Medical Education and English), Sabrina Derrington (Pediatrics), and Ron Ben-Ari (Internal Medicine and Medical Education). Co-sponsored by the Keck School of Medicine’s HEAL (Humanities, Ethics, Art, and Law) Program and the Center for Bioethics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Art:
Patricia Fortlage, On The Menu, 2023
Framed archival pigment print, 16” x 20” x 1”

Kat Chudy, Sick Coat, 2022
Thrift store men's XL jacket, netting, faux leather, studs, and thread, 24” x 18” x 14"

Rachel Ungerer, Here For All of You, 2022
Acrylic on canvas, 28” x 22”