It can be very flattening?<\/b><\/p>\n
Exactly. When I started to feel comfortable identifying as someone who has a disability and is neurodivergent, who also parents someone who is neurodivergent, I started to realise that design can begin to be used in a very celebratory, uplifting way. To me, that’s the whole point of design and art, to help you feel that you have a collective responsibility, and to help people feel valued, understood and seen. So I feel that my work naturally became rooted in advocacy, as a result of not necessarily feeling that I was seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s something that you will often hear from Black, disabled people; they feel very demonised, they\u2019re demoralised. They’re often viewed as a threat, they’re viewed as the enemy. Often we see disabled people in the media, and they\u2019re othered, they’re not necessarily celebrated. It\u2019s gotten a bit better in terms of disabled people adding their own perspectives to the stories they\u2019re creating, and I feel that\u2019s what helps the work become celebratory. You bring joy to the conversation when you strip away all the voices that are expecting disability to look a certain way. But it really needs disabled people to be encouraged to take up those positions of leadership, especially in design, to really say what they want to say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My work naturally became rooted in advocacy<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n A big part of your work is advocating for access and inclusion, but there’s a lot of joy in it too. Is this something that\u2019s conscious?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Yes, that’s very intentional, especially since my son, who is ten years old, was diagnosed as autistic. Instantly, we were told: this is what you have to do to make sure that you can \u2018normalise\u2019 him, or to make sure that he’s a productive asset to society and that he can function properly and he can comply and adapt to the world around him. Never is the conversation rooted in: how can the world adapt to him?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I ended up learning, and I’m still learning so much, from his eccentricities and his joy, and I want to be able to reciprocate that, so that he knows that his way of existing and his identity is celebrated completely. I don’t want for him to exist in a world where he feels like he has to be different or change for anyone. Reading a lot of these really horrible stories of autistic kids, Black autistic kids, being bullied, and feeling that they’re less than and that they’re of no value, it\u2019s hard. Not only are we teaching him to advocate for himself, but we are having a lot of conversations through the artwork that we create as a family, genuine conversations about what our lives are like, what our stories are, and what we can contribute to the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It sounds like your practice has almost expanded to include your son. How do you find balancing the responsibilities of motherhood with your life as an artist?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n We’re taught that as mothers and caregivers the work shouldn’t be personal or too internalised, that you have to speak to a universal audience. But I think of all the other disabled mothers and caregivers who are out there and who want to feel they’re being looked after, they want to feel that they’re part of a collective community that’s rooted in care and justice, and they want to see design that really reflects who they are. I felt very uncomfortable trying to separate my work from motherhood, because I knew that they were one and the same for me.<\/span><\/p>\n Also, Black maternal health is a very huge deal. The ratio of Black mothers who are overworked and objectified within society, and unless we have a certain amount of degrees or accolades, we\u2019re not always respected, just for the work that we continue to put into our homes, our communities, when in essence caregivers provide so much of what everyone needs to survive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/everpress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/image_6483441-3.jpg\")
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