CRIP COLLAB
CRIP COLLAB is a collaborative zine featuring artists who belong to all three of these fantastic communities: Disabled, Racialized and 2SLGBTQ+. This zine is curated by a multiply disabled, chronically ill, cancer survivor named Pree Rehal. For the Luminato Issue 3, there is a focus on Deaf artists; Courage Bacchus joins as Contributing Editor.
Curator Statement
CRIP COLLAB was born from a need to engage with more art by disabled, racialized, queer, Two-Spirit, trans, non-binary and gender non-forming folks. For Issue 3, we received 35 applications and had to make the difficult decision to select 10 featured artists. 8 of the artists are Black, and all 10 artists belong to both the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and the Deaf and Disabled community.
This zine was curated by Pree and Courage.
Pree is a multiply disabled, chronically ill, cancer survivor who belongs to the Panjabi diaspora.
Courage is Tkaronto-Guyanese Black Deaf Queer, Former Deaf olympican, actress and activist.
Learn more about Pree Rehal
Crip as a term is a reclaimed slur, that is used by disabled folks. Self-identifying as a crip comes from learning about disability justice, disability pride, and finding disabled community. Not all disabled folks identify as crips, but it’s a term that feels good to me.
– Pree, CRIP COLLAB Curator
Artists
Winter Plum
Title: Sketch no.1 Daydreaming, A Lookbook for gender fluid fronteristx
Digital Sketch
Image description: A partial digital sketch of a person’s head from the side, who has a buzz cut with a shaved line half an inch above their ear. The main title is on top of the sketch in red and reads A Lookbook for gender fluid fronteristx. A subtitle of the sketch is below the figure in black and reads Sketch no.1 Daydreaming, A lookbook for gender fluid fronteristx.
About Winter Plum: “I’m a creative and neuro-atypical mind, born in Florianopolis, Brazil, living as a love migrant in Canada. I sign as ‘Winter Plum’ and go by ‘they and them.’ I am part of a collective named Other Ways to Care.”
Ruth Marie
Title: We Held the Light of the Moon in Our Hands
Mixed media collage
Image description: Against a velvety midnight blue sky floats a small Black child with short dark brown curls, sparkling brown eyes and a wide, innocent smile. Head tilted, they are dressed in a cream coloured robe, right hand holding onto the glowing full moon and left hand held up, a golden yellow beam of light glowing in their palm. Spread at their feet are sprigs of purple lilacs, clusters of elderberries and blackberries. The sky is dotted with distant glowing stars.
About Ruth Marie: Ruth seeks to explore the bonds between humanity and nature, and what can affect them. Her practice is grounded in the minutiae of life as a fat, Black disabled person moving between pastoral and metropolitan settings. Her work is a means of both expression and healing.
Teneshia T. Samuel
Title: Tenacity
India Ink on Paper
Image description: With strong and sweeping brushstrokes in this image, the visual journey swirls and meanders, requesting the viewer to commit to the path of the brush on paper. High-contrast bold black-on-white creates an experience that can be sensated by the visually-impaired both up close and from a distance.
About Teneshia T. Samuel: A first-generation child of Caribbean immigrants to the treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Teneshia T. Samuel is a multi-disciplinary artist, scholar, psycho-educator and counsellor. Born visually and hearing impaired, Teneshia’s art investigates the creative process as a multi-sensory and accessible transformational technology.
Ella Josephine
Untitled
Painting
Image description: A painting of a Black girl, smiling and wearing a black t-shirt with a pink heart in the middle. The girl is surrounded by text. Above the girl’s head is a text that reads “What did yourself ever do to you?” On her right side, it reads “I will hold your teddy bear hostage” and “have you turned into a secret duck.” On her left side, it reads, “you put the yum in gross”, “I am evil but not that evil” and “I’m to important to be left.”
About: Ella Josephine is a beautiful and brilliant Black 5 year old girl who’s born deaf and physically disabled from a brachial plexus injury acquired at birth. She desires to one day be a paediatric doctor who specializes in the competent care of racialized people needing maternal health.
Link to Ella Josephine’s parent Instagram
Ashley T.
Black Tortoise
Mixed Media Polyptych (acrylic paint, wood, paper, and plaster on canvas)
Image description: 21 canvases in total. 20 6×6 inch canvases divided into 4 major colour groups, red, yellow, green, and blue, creating a rainbow outer frame to the large 24×24 inch grey canvas in the centre. Each colour group of canvases has 5 canvases in colour succession starting with red in the top left corner and ending with a red-violet near the top left corner. The rainbow outer frame has small black stencils of tortoises marching to the right with different coloured shell plates. The centre grey canvas has a giant tortoise that is 3D in construction with a series of colourful shell plates that are a mixture of the colours on the small tortoise shell plates. Some shell plates are reflective.
About Ashley T: “As a young, Black Biracial, Bisexual Woman with Type II Bipolar Disorder from Toronto, I have coined myself as the “Bi-fecta” of intersections. I am a multidisciplinary artist and use my art to ground and remind myself of the power I possess to be a positive change in this world.”
Hope-Adina
Untitled
Photograph
Image description: This image is of Hope’s hands tattooed with the words “Land Back.” Both hands are spread apart pressing firmly into the ground.
“This photo was taken during a police raid while I was burying sacred ashes into the ground to perform the ceremony. I felt the image of my hand tattoos plus the dirt and Ashes was very powerful and represented what the Land Back movement is about.”
About Hope-Adina: Hope is a two spirit disabled artist who has been doing art for 20+ years now. Art is a big part of their existence as well as the intersections of identity that they hold to near and dear to their heart.
CILLA
Untitled
Digital collage of photographs
Image description: Close up of Cilla in a bright orange bathing suit in collage form with blue, black, and white illustrations around the four photos. Mediums used photography, collage and Photoshop.
About: Cilla is a Black queer entrepreneur of Caribbean descent based in Canada. Being unable to express herself growing up, Cilla began to use her hands to create stories and movement through art. She began body painting editorial and fashion-based looks, incorporating patterns, shapes and odd brush strokes to the human body.
Dolly Roul
Untitled
Acrylic
Image description: This is a rectangular image with three parts. The background is halved in two: the left side is painted in royal blue, slightly distressed, the right side is a greyish sky blue with three white clouds. Overlaid, in the centre, there is a large circular painting with a vibrant green background featuring a brown-skinned womanly figure from the torso down, with their legs open to reveal three vertical smudges in red paint with dark trim. Protruding below the vaginal area are three lines connected to three red strawberries. Overlaid on the right, as if growing along the curve of the circle, are flowers painted in pastel colours, their green leaves spreading across the sky background.
About Dolly Roul: “I am a Black artist with a disability. My art is a part of me; It is emotional and personal. It is my way to express the things I cannot say with words.”
Jasbina Justice
Poem
Image description: The image is of concrete poem (black text on white background), entitled Swell, with the following verse: told to shrink in magnificence, down down down proud voices – silenced, languages lost like sparrows we flit in fear in retort, I swell self largess eat from abundance, climb onto my shoulders build nests in my hair, declare freedom on the crown of my head
About: Jasbina Justice (they/them) is a disabled Scarborough based multi-disciplinary artist, parent, and sex worker of colour. Their work explores love, sex, identity, madness, the weird and the eerie. Jasbina is a published poet, author, and editor (recent work featured in Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019).
Robin Gaudreau
Untitled
Photograph
Image description: The image is a digitally manipulated picture of used bottles of intramuscular medication, along with injection supplies. The background is dark red on top and bright blue on the bottom. The picture appears to have been taken through a plastic film.
About: Robin Gaudreau is a trans-disciplinary self-taught digital media and movement artist. They have found a community of chronically ill artists in Tkatoronto.
