Esse 117 - Crip

Description

“Crip”—short for the pejorative term “cripple”—was reappropriated in the 1970s by the disability movement as a term of empowerment among people with disabilities. Over the last decade, the term has developed into a powerful analytic for contemporary art, influenced by the emergence of crip theory, an intersectional framework nourished by Black feminist and queer theory that examines how experiences of disability are shaped by race, class, gender.

Crip is both a noun and a verb, a theory and a practice, offering disabled artists non-normative ways for articulating the strange temporalities of disabled experience and alternative ways for navigating an ableist art world. As a verb or a methodology, crip breaks down, twists, or defamiliarizes conventional concepts and representational practices. Working from their lived experiences, crip artists have challenged how disability is defined by the media and the neoliberal state in relation to compulsory able-bodiedness and an inability to perform waged labour. “Cripping the arts” has involved advocating for greater inclusion of disabled, neurodivergent, chronically ill, mad, and Deaf artists in the mainstream art world; it has also led to the creation of alternative art spaces and organizations that meet the needs of disabled communities and the strange temporalities of disabled experience. For queer disabled writer and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, crip describes an artistic and activist aesthetic that values disability as a source of strength and resilience.

Crip arts have reframed representations of disability and contributed to disability justice activisms. Drawing on the Black disabled artist Yinka Shonibare’s comment that disability arts are the “last avant-garde,” Tangled: Art + Disability director of programming Sean Lee advocates for accessible curatorial practices rooted in care and resistance. Thanks to the efforts of disabled artists, activists, and curators, crip arts have flourished over the last decade, leading to increased funding and public exposure for disability arts and activism. But the embrace of disability often continues to operate under normative ableist and capitalist systems. In their primer “Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice,” Philadelphia-based artist Carolyn Lazard reproaches arts institutions for wanting disabled art “on non-disabled time and in non-disabled space.” DC – Art Indisciplinaire—a Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal artist-run centre operated by a collective of artists of diverse abilities—argues that the art world is capitalizing on identity politics, with short-term funding opportunities tied to identity-based categories but with little structural change or long-term support for disabled artists. Moving beyond critique, the centre’s work affirms the lived experiences of disabled artists and the knowledges that emerge from their practices.

For this issue, Esse arts + opinions solicits texts that engage crip aesthetics and theories in contemporary art. We welcome papers that consider disability in the arts, both by highlighting the work of disabled, chronically ill, mad, and Deaf artists and by critiquing the commodification and tokenization of disability artists by cultural institutions. We acknowledge the systemic and structural ways that Esse is implicated in productivist cycles that neglect the exigencies of “crip time.” How can we crip curatorial and publishing practices? How, in this moment when disability is receiving more funding and attention, can we cultivate futures that don’t simply “accommodate” disability, but that centre, value, and desire it as a source of collective transformation? We seek reflections on the critical and creative potentials that crip (the noun) and cripping (the verb) elicit. We invite texts that explore how artists have cripped the visual and performing arts to disrupt ableist norms and recentre vulnerability, interdependence, mutual aid, and collective care.

Editor
Sylvette Babin

Publisher
Les éditions esse/Esse Magazine

Publication Date
2026

Size
11.5 x 9.00 x 0.38 inches
136 pages

Binding
Softcover, perfect-bound

ISBN
978-2-924345-74-0

ISSN
0831-859x