Deconstructing Disability: Perspectives + Identities brings together work by Lesley University students, staff, and faculty who identify as disabled. Encompassing a range of media, subjects, and creative approaches, the exhibition offers varied perspectives while encouraging a broader and more nuanced understanding of disability. The works on view may engage disability directly or reflect other dimensions of their makers’ personal, cultural, emotional, and creative lives.
Rather than presenting disability as a fixed or singular condition, Deconstructing Disability recognizes it as a broad spectrum of lived experiences, identities, and ways of moving through and understanding the world. The exhibition affirms the presence and contributions of disabled artists throughout the Lesley community while creating space for visibility, reflection, and dialogue. Participating artists were selected by guest jurors Camilla Jerome and Bill Porter, interdisciplinary artists and educators whose practices are informed by their own experiences of disability.
A reception for Deconstructing Disability: Perspectives + Identities will be held on Thursday, October 15, from 12:00 - 2:00 PM and will include live performances by Lesley students. The program will feature poetry performed by Michelé Crowder (Adult Learner/Expressive Arts Therapy), along with dance performances choreographed by Jewels Roberts (undergraduate Psychology/Expressive Arts Therapy) and Alex Dolph (graduate Clinical Mental Health Counseling/Dance/Movement Therapy). Together, these performances extend the exhibition beyond the visual works on view, bringing additional perspectives to the themes of identity and lived experience.
On view at The Raizes Gallery, Lesley Art + Design
1801 Mass Ave., Porter Square, Cambridge
October 12 - November 15, 2026
Guest jurors: Camilla Jerome and Bill Porter
- Participating artists (alphabetical by last name):
Danny Bolter
Heavenly Claypool
Michelé Crowder
Anna Giudice
Jane Kim-Testa
Madison Mirabile
Anaya Pinney
Jennifer Raymond
Megan Samora
Quinn Stevens
Josie Vano
Chloe Vercellini
Leonardo Zamora Briceno