Theme
5:42pm April 11, 2012

Mary Duffy painting. She did a really amazing performance art thing that I’ve only seen part of. Where she stood naked in front of an audience, posed to resemble the Venus de Milo, and talked back about how the medical profession treated her growing up with no arms. I didn’t know she was a painter too.

About that performance I saw part of, she says:

“As with all of my previous work in this arena, the performance piece called "Stories of a Body” has its origins in issues that arise in my own life, and is firmly rooted in my experience as a disabled woman. It takes the form of a monologue that I delivered standing naked in front of my audience. This format was prompted by my initial visit to a G.P. Without much preamble or invitation, he launched into a speech about how thalidomide had been such an awful tragedy and how I must feel very angry towards him and the medical profession in general. Then he waited for me to ‘absolve’ him of all this guilt he was carrying and trying to dump on me. As an adult I was able to give back to him responsibility for his own feelings, and cleared with him how I wanted him to relate to me as my G.P. However, the incident shook me and reminded me forcefully of how I had been disempowered as a child, -how I had been stripped naked, objectified and desensitized by the medical profession as they labeled, categorised, defined and re-defined my very existence. I remember remembering it all, recording it in my child’s memory as if to act as a witness in my adulthood to the indignity I endured as a child. I remember the big words they used, I remember their recommendations when I was four years old, and how their artificial arms would fit me better if they sliced off my little hand. Most of all, I remember their horror at my condition. They treated me as if I were invisible and incapable of comprehending the judgments they were making about me and my future.“

She also says:

"In a single sentence, my issue-based work has always been about opposing cultural norms and making strong, and vibrant statements about my life and the lives of other disabled people, our commitments and our values.

Disability Arts is not, as some eccentric disabled people shutting ourselves off from the rest of society. Disability arts gives us the confidence and the opportunity to take our place in society authorised and empowered by the understanding that we do not need to discard our identity as the price of being accepted and included.”