Jessica A. Cooley

In my research and curatorial practice, I have developed a new methodological approach to disability and art that helps scholars and curators address the unseen forms of ableism that constrict our work. What I call crip materiality calls our attention to the overlooked ways that ableism affects even the treatment and valuation of the material conditions of art. This is most starkly condensed in the concept of “inherent vice.” First applied in maritime insurance law to the enslaved, inherent vice now describes unintentionally disintegrating art objects. In critically attending to the intersection of structural racist and ableist discourses and practices, crip materiality intervenes in the ways we treat art objects as key to disability justice in scholarship and curation.