Universal Power of Art

My home is filled with portraits made by my aunts, as well as mosaic landscapes and architectural pieces created by my mother. The entirety of my childhood was spent at a dance studio, where I was able to escape outside pressures and find joy in the movement of my body alongside the rhythm of the music. To say the least, I’ve found my life to be constantly connected to art. I’ve always had this idea that art allows everyone to escape into a world fully controlled by the individual.

Simi Linton’s documentary, Invitation to Dance, to me encapsulates what art has always meant to me, and further expands on it. Simi Linton invites us into a world where the power of dance is available to all kinds of bodies. This documentary challenges the way able bodies have thought of as dance, using dance as a way of self-expression and unity of a community in order to demand for an inclusive society. When Simi Linton told an audience to raise their left hands in the air (representing society) and then make a fist with their right hands (representing a person with a disability), I found it to be a simple yet powerful metaphor. The film centered primarily on physical disabilities, therefore it would be very interesting to see how the role of dance has played for people with intellectual disabilities. As a fellow dance lover, I thought AXIS Dance Company showcased some incredible performances throughout the film and it would be great to see them in person one day!

I would love to further discuss what is meant by disability aesthetics, and how disability has been embraced by modern art to be a central concept. In the introduction of Disability Aesthetics Siebers reviews the work of Judith Scott “Her method demonstrates the freedom both to make art from what she wants and to change the meaning of objects by inserting them into different contexts.” Scott had an incredible career, which many artists strive for. I don’t know much about modern art (nearly nothing), but from how Sieber described Scott, she seems to have played a major rule in incorporating disability as fundamental part to modern art.