Locating Your Practice in ‘Chicago Disability Activism, Arts, and Design,’ with Bri Beck

This post is an excerpt from my article on Sixty Inches From Center, which supports and promotes art and writing that thrives primarily outside of mainstream historical narratives.

“I could have never expected this, it’s so exciting. It [makes me] feel like my story has been told for a very long time, and I don’t always have to be the one telling my story,” asserts Bri Beck while discussing the work in Chicago Disability Activism, Arts, and Design: 1970s to Today at Gallery 400. The exhibition is a multi-generational sampling of the disability-centered artwork that has been coming out of Chicago over the last fifty-plus years. Artist and art therapy graduate student Bri Beck and I visit the exhibition to discuss her experience as a part of this rich history. As we make our way through the gallery, Beck points out artists she’s worked with, portraits of people she recognizes, and professors she’s been mentored by. “I love being a part of the Chicago disability community,” says Beck. A close-knit and interconnected community, she explains, “there aren’t very many of us!”

The seemingly small circle of artists and activists doing disability work in Chicago is precisely what has made the city an epicenter for advocacy and creative expression around accessibility. As described in the didactic material, this exhibition “will tell the stories of how Chicagoans with disabilities and their allies broke barriers, created change in policy and federal law, and changed culture at a time when the reality of life for many people with disabilities was the restrictions imposed by institutionalization and segregation.” A starting point for much of the work discussed in the exhibition is the activism of Marca Bristo and Riva Lehrer, who established the seminal organization Access Living along with their extensive collection of disability art, respectively. Beck is involved with Access Living through her art therapy work, including young adult disability and racial justice efforts. Through the foundations built by people like Bristo and Lehrer, Beck and emerging artists of her generation are more connected through art and activism than ever before.

This community wasn’t something that Beck was immediately aware of. “It’s something I always thought I had to do on my own…I didn’t grow up knowing there was such a large disability arts and culture movement.” Mainstreaming children with disabilities is certainly still the path many families choose and was part of Beck’s experience before moving to Chicago. Beck explains that, even when asked to join communities around disability, “I was very against it, very like, ‘oh no, I’m not going to be in your club just because we all have a chair,’ or ‘we’re all of short stature’ or anything. It just felt weird to me. But now I understand why they’re so important, to see yourself in somebody else, and—especially as a kid—to see adults like [me] thriving.” After coming to pursue her graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Beck was exposed to the disability culture present here and has been adding her own voice to the chorus ever since.

Read the rest of this piece at Sixty Inches From Center.

Find out more about Bri Beck and her artistic practice at her website. Chicago Disability Activism, Arts, and Design: 1970s to Today is on view at Gallery 400 until October 20th.

This article is presented in collaboration with Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy through more than 30 exhibitions, as well as hundreds of talks, tours and special events in 2018.