Artist,
Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
About Emery
Emery Vanderburgh is a multimedia artist passionate about access and community collaboration. She uses animation, 3D modeling, sculpture and film to explore nuanced disability representation. She is a core member of the Access In The Making Lab at Concordia University.
Contact
Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Emery's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Disruptions in Grace: Embracing Mutation and Disability in Nature through Art
Gripping tightly onto a walking stick, I slowly and precariously make my way through the forest. Careful not to catch my prosthetic foot on the exposed roots, I’m scanning the ground when I see a disfigured branch, gnarled, with burls and nodules on it. These masses—called “galls”—are a common growth mutation that can be caused by various factors: bacteria, insects, and rapid changes in weather. I grew up on a fruit tree farm, so I’ve seen this before, but a different familiarity, like a kinship, spurred me to take the branch home. I soon became obsessed with the idea of “tree tumors” and the aesthetics of mutation in nature as a beautiful and intriguing expression of disease and disability. They evoked memories of the way seeing my medical scans eased the abject fear of my cancer – even though the scans felt alien and depersonalized from me, they offered a (read more...)