The sculpture seen below has featured in other blog posts; it was a final piece in my second year and is titled Disability Erased.
As briefly mentioned in my pecha kucha blog post, this was a 3D printed version of myself that didn’t capture all of the detail in my wheelchair. I had always intended to use this model for photographing difficult terrain and daily challenges, but ran out of time due to technical issues. I was quite disheartened by the lack of information captured by the 3D scanner; it couldn’t cope with the shiny surfaces which didn’t bode well – in effect it erased a part of me. Yet, an Alice without her wheelchair is not complete. Like the scanner, it seems society would prefer me without it.
While organising the pages for the enlarged image on the floor of my studio, I started putting them on the wall, one-by-one, with myself at the centre; this left a gap where my image should have been in the pages on the floor (see photo below).
Looking at this reminded me of the original figure and how my disability was erased. There are parallels with this and the missing page which both mirror the way society is not built to cope with disability. This happy accident left me thinking about how I could purposefully alter the next image to displace myself from the scene.
I really like how this transforms the work, shifting both it’s meaning and encouraging the viewer to find deeper meaning in the piece.
I love the composition of my studio wall and how harmonious the series is in terms of the colours and textures. This harmony is in opposition to the tension I experience when I travel through the locations featured. The irony that the yellow and black colours that dominate in these works, happen also to be the colours of the university brand, is not lost on me.
