Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning is the follow-up to Indisposable: Structures of Support after the Americans with Disabilities Act, a three-year collaboration with more than thirty artists and scholars that emerged as eight online chapters each addressing the urgent questions of the moment where COVID-19 pandemic and demands for racial justice laid bare that some lives – especially disabled, queer, Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) – are deemed disposable. These chapters serve as a unique archive of the ways in which artists and scholars responded to the intertwined histories of ableism and racism, delving into the profound questions of what makes our lives livable? How do we afford our own existence and what happens when we cannot? Who creates the means by which we survive; or, were we ever meant to survive? Where are we seen as disposable, and why?

Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning extends these conversations and questions by focusing on two topics critical to all eight chapters: care and mourning. The artists of Indisposable address the difficult work of not just how to care and to mourn for those deemed disposable but how to activate that work into tactics for insisting on our indisposability.

The artists in the exhibition are committed to resisting the oppressive ideologies of bodily productivity and “normalcy” that have been used as markers of human worth. Their work offers audiences the chance to consider new tactics for care and mourning, activist strategies emerging from within and uplifting communities living in precarity.

Exhibition installation information

Photo: Sebastian Bach
Photo: Sebastian Bach
Photo: Sebastian Bach
Photo: Sebastian Bach
Photo: Sebastian Bach
Photo: Sebastian Bach

Allison Leigh Holt

A Living Model of Hyperbolic Space, 2017 / 2020
Glass, water, steel, neodymium magnets, mirrored acrylic, Parmotrema
Perlatum lichen
Dimensions variable

Multiple contributors

What would an HIV Doula do? – What does an uprising Doula do?, 2021
128 pages
8.5 x 5.5 inches

Pamela Sneed - Installation of Selected Works From the Series: Tops, 2022; Photo: Sebastion Bach

Pamela Sneed

Installation of Selected Works from the Series: Tops, 2022

When My Brothers Were Alive and the Sun Shone, 2022

The Mourning Series, 2018

Untitled Haiku, 2022

Watercolor, acrylic, neon
Dimensions variable

Alex Dolores Salerno - EXTRAHERE, 2021; Photo: Sebastion Bach

Alex Dolores Salerno

EXTRAHERE, 2021
Coffee beans, thread, and cable reel
16 x 20 x 16 inches

Alex Dolores Salerno and Francisco Echo Eraso - Regalos, 2020; Photo: Sebastian Bach

Alex Dolores Salerno and Francisco Echo Eraso

Regalos, 2020
Used pillowcase, handspun thread, hair
94 x 46 inches

Kiyan Williams - In Defense of Weeds, 2022, Photo: Sebastian Bach

Kiyan Williams

In Defense of Weeds, 2022
Amaranth, LED grow light, mirror-polished stainless steel, MDF
Dimensions variable

Raisa Kabir - NO PROTECTION, 2020, Photo: Sebastian Bach

Raisa Kabir

NO PROTECTION, 2020
Yarn, wool, and cotton
20 x 24 x 4 inches each panel

Kevin Quiles Bonilla - Carryover (Blue Tarp in Vega Alta), 2019, Photo: Sebastian Bach

Kevin Quiles Bonilla

Carryover (Blue Tarp in Vega Alta), 2019
C-print
41 x 61 x 2 1/4 inches

Alex Dolores Salerno - Arranged with Care, 2022; Photo: Sebastian Bach

Alex Dolores Salerno

Arranged with Care, 2022
2 channel video, airplane pillowcase, herbs, and the color of horchata lojana
Dimensions variable

Sami Schalk - Embracing the Fabulously Mundane, 2020; Pleasure is the Point, 2022; Photo: Sebastian Bach

Sami Schalk

Installation of selected works from the series: #QuarantineLooks, Becoming a Pleasure Artist

Embracing the Fabulously Mundane, 2020
24 x 36 inches each

Pleasure is the Point, 2022
24 x 16 inches each

C-prints
Courtesy of Sam Waldron/Dutcher Photography

Black Power Naps - Chill Pill (Rockabye Baby)

Black Power Naps

Chill Pill (Rockabye Baby), 2022
Plywood, paint, mattress, dye, cotton gauze, Kanekalon hair
16.4 x 9.8 feet

Indira Allegra - TEXERE: The Shape of Loss is A Tapestry

Indira Allegra

TEXERE: The Shape of Loss is A Tapestry, 2022
Commemorative images and text offered from users of TEXERE, LED Tiles
Dimensions variable

fierce pussy - Transmission VI

fierce pussy

Transmission VI, 2022
Offset and Braille on paper, limited edition of 3000

Riva Lehrer - Zoom Portraits: Alice Wong

Riva Lehrer

Zoom Portraits: Alice Wong, 2020
Graphite, colored pencil on acetate
25.25 x 31.25 inches

Riva Lehrer - The Risk Pictures: Sharrona Pearl

Riva Lehrer

The Risk Pictures: Sharrona Pearl, 2021
Charcoal, pencil, pastel, and collage on acetate and illustration board
25 x 63 inches

Jill H. Casid - Untitled (Throw Out)

Jill H. Casid

Untitled (throw out), 2017 – 2022
Video (16:30), paper envelope, projector
Conceived, written, and performed by Jill Casid and realized by Jack Kellogg
Dimensions variable

Jill H. Casid - Spirochetes of Contact

Jill H. Casid

Spirochetes of Contact, 2019
SX-70 Polaroids, wooden support structure conceived in collaboration with and fabricated by Sylvie Rosenthal
30 x 192 x 12 inches