For able-bodied audiences, navigating through a museum or exhibition can be a straightforward experience. For those with disabilities, however, the barriers they face are often overlooked.
The Zimmerli Art Museum has unveiled a new group exhibition featuring the work of artists with disabilities from around the world. Titled Smoke & Mirrors, the show conceptualizes access through ideas of transparency, antagonism, and humor as each artist brings institutional inequity to the surface.
“The exhibition really comes from the perspective of a disabled person or a disabled artist specifically. It’s trying to make transparent this idea of something that we ordinarily would not notice or take for granted,” says guest curator Dr. Amanda Cachia. “That’s why I use that turn of phrase, ‘smoke and mirrors.’”
Smoke & Mirrors is an exploration of “access aesthetics,” an artistic genre coined by Dr. Cachia in her book The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art & Institutional Critique. Working beyond representational politics, this form focuses on translating experience through sensory expansion, touch, and movement, offering a glimpse into what it’s like to “be with” disability.
The exhibition spans across mediums of videos, drawings, sculptures, textiles, and multi-media installations from 14 international artists. Drawing from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, these artists come together to create a more expansive understanding and perception of the disabled experience.
Smoke & Mirrors is now on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University until December 22, 2024.
Zimmerli Art Museum
71 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ, 08901
