Kirsty Collins
About the work
#DeafAF, 2023
$575
#SickBitch, 2023
$575
#DisabledAF, 2023
$875
clay, colour terrasigillata, spray paint, plywood
These tiles use a font I designed during the pandemic while isolating with my rare disease, Cogans Syndrome. The font is called deaf-metal disability pride font. The tiles contain anti-ableist disability pride hashtags that disabled folk like me shared while communicating on social media with other rare-disease, deaf, and disabled friends during the pandemic. Together, we, the disabled and chronically ill - immunosuppressed community, were able to encourage each other to keep going in a hostile ableist society and to find value in our altered lives.
There is a vast, underutilised community of isolated and vulnerable people who can work but not in regular rigid full-time or part-time jobs face-to-face; they are still very competent. During COVID, we were shocked to discover that the reason we couldn’t access work for years while working from home was dissolved instantly when employers and those in power were working at home to avoid COVID. Our ableist work culture needs sympathetic and flexible employers to accommodate the weekly rollercoaster of ability-disability functionality of chronic illness. We must protect our NDIS as it’s the most logical way to strengthen our economy by creating a thriving industry around healthcare, providing jobs to those affected by AI, joblessness and, most importantly, creating an entirely new workforce of empowered disabled people.
About Kirsty Collins
Formerly a pioneer in digital/web art direction, Kirsty has a BFA (UNSW COFA) and an MFA in electronic and temporal art from USYD SCA 2003. She was a finalist in the 2021 National Emerging Artist Award; the NSW Fishers Ghost Art Award 2020 and the Victorian 2020 Klytie-Pate Biennale Ceramics Award.
Kirsty is a disability activist – totally deaf with bilateral Cochlears she uses Auslan. A rare-disease advocate with Cogan’s Syndrome, she is investigating developing new artwork engaging the deaf-blind, deaf, blind communities to transform the gallery space going beyond the tokenistic access model.
Top image: Kirsty Collins, #DeafAF, #SickBitch, #DisabledAF (detail), 2023. Photo: Courtesy of the Artist.