Just Looking and Staring Back: Challenging Ableism through Disability Performance Art

This article advocates for art curriculum to be guided by the goal of challenging the discrimination, stigmatization, marginalization, and medicalization of disabled people. The Disability Arts Movement provides an important site through which to engage students in exploring the sociopolitical issue of ableism in art curriculum. The pedagogical strategies of disability performance artists Carrie Sandahl, Mary Duffy, and Petra Kuppers are examined for the purposes of establishing an affirmative model that focuses upon the cultural contributions of disabled people rather than an orientation that focuses upon individual functional limitations. It is suggested that the strategies of critical appropriation and autobiography used by these artists offer ways through which to conceptualize disability as a sociopolitical issue in art curriculum. In its conclusions, this article suggests that an integration of the sociopolitical orientation and affirmative model of disability in the classroom be employed guided by the important work of the Disability Arts Movement in order to challenge ableist ideologies.