Aidan Moesby: Disability Curating – Caring and Being Cared For

 

Portrait photo of Aidan Moesby. He has white hair and a short white beard. He has black, round-shaped glasses and a friendly smile. Behind him is water and some boats beside a pier.

Aidan Moesby is an artist, curator and writer. He brings a nuanced and insightful approach to the emotional context of working with climate change and the deep inter-connectedness between the natural and social environments within modern life.  

  

  

  

I grew up with very little access to culture. In a one parent, working class family, culture was not part of our essential family diet. There were far more pressing matters regarding the urgency of getting through the everyday. I was not permitted to study art at school as I ‘could not draw or paint’. I also grew up with no access or reference to disability. Nothing, or very little to prepare me for later life and the world I occupy now as a disabled neurodivergent artist and curator. 

I came late to the art and disability world. I had a career as an environmentalist and as a therapist for traumatised children. When my health meant I could no longer practice as a therapist, I slowly developed an interest in art. I had no experience, context or understanding how to develop a practice. I had all the familiar questions, not only how to be and what it means to be an artist but navigating the art world, particularly from a disability perspective. How do you get an exhibition, how do you find work, how do you sell? What does it mean to be commissioned, what do you do on a residency or what does a life as a practicing artist look like?  

Being introduced to the disability arts community through Disability Arts Online was the best thing that could have happened to me. I have been fortunate to meet and been supported and mentored by different artists and curators as I have developed my practice, for example Vici Wrefford-Sinnott in Newcastle, Anne Cunningham at the Art House in Wakefield and Kerry Harker from The Tetley, Leeds. More recently working with Disability Arts Shropshire (DASH) and Elinor Morgan from Middlesbrough Institute for Modern Art, MIMA, has been particularly influential as I have developed my curatorial practice. Meeting the right people at the right time has been incredible, but you can’t really plan that.  

Creating a network is essential, both personal and professional, not just to surviving but thriving in the art world. Sometimes you might meet someone and not hear from them, or after two years they write to you because the right opportunity has come up. Or it may be a ‘slow burn’, a series of conversations over time. This can take an awful long time and occasionally seem like progress is glacial, but the benefits of the time and effort invested in creating and maintaining these relationships more than outweighs the cost. 

Developing a Practice as an Artist and Curator

I researched art and disability arts a lot in the beginning of my career. I met writer, director Vici Wrefford-Sinnott through a local disability arts network. This was a great start, learning and gaining a context from people who had been active in the disability arts movement for a long time. This gave me my first opportunities to make and exhibit work. From there I developed a relationship with Disability Arts Online. At first, I attended events and applied for small scale projects or writing commissions. As I became more experienced, I applied for more ambitious projects. This also helped me get funding from Arts Council England.  

In 2016 I did a Master’s Degree in Curating. This was partly my own interest but partly I felt I needed some validation or proof to others that I knew what I was talking about and could do what I said I could. In 2018 I became Disability Arts Online’s Associate Artist focusing on curating, eventually putting on an exhibition at the Foundry in London showing ten disabled artists’ work. 

Soon I applied for a practice-based PhD in Climate Change and Wellbeing. At the same time in 2019 I became the first Disabled Curator in Residence at MIMA as part of the Future Curators Program, facilitated by DASH. Having maintained the relationship with MIMA since I completed that program, I have now curated Towards New Worlds, which is an exhibition featuring fifteen disabled, d/Deaf and/or neurodivergent artists. The exhibition opened in July 2024.  

In amongst these personally major milestones I have been developing my practice as an artist. I have run my own projects, been commissioned to make work or been awarded residencies. This has been mostly outside the white walls of a gallery. Alongside the art and curating, I have also developed my writing and speaking practice taking part in events, panels and conferences. For me this is all part of my practice and not three individual unconnected elements.   

Creating a sustainable creative practice has not been, and is not, easy. There are periods of feast and famine, too much and not enough. At first it was all stop start: doing one project, finishing it, then applying for the next thing and waiting until I was successful. That was all I could manage as I was learning and developing my practice. Now I have a much more sustainable process, although it still does not always go according to plan. I try to have short, medium and long-term projects as well as projects of different scale. This offers variety and gives me scope to accept smaller gigs which may get offered to me. It also gives me the opportunity of meeting new people and increasing my network. 

Mainstream and Disability Arts

We say ‘artist’ as if it is one fixed thing, but there are many ways to be an artist. I am self-taught and I do not have a specific media I work in, but I do work around a theme, Climate Change and Wellbeing. I make performance, film, sound, sculpture or installation, for example. I work in the public realm with a socially engaged practice, often collaborating with others and sometimes on residency. I rarely show work in galleries and I do not make work to sell. 

I have developed this practice over many years. There are many artists who only work in one media, make work to be shown and selled in galleries and art fairs, do not work in the community or socially and do not collaborate. Other artists exist on the residency circuit going from one residency to another or work on private commissions.  

I always found it difficult talking about my practice. Being neurodivergent made answering this complex because I could not filter out elements in my response. Now I have learnt that this is a context specific answer. Not everyone needs to know everything. I always say I work with climate change and wellbeing, exploring physical and emotional weather, using a variety of media and formats. However, now I know when it is relevant to say I work within a social justice or human rights context within disability and/or climate change impact. There are many versions of the same story. Practice may vary over time, but it is important to know what practice is and be able to talk about why you do what you do. It helps people to understand your work and to connect with you.

A dark space with the wall and the floor painted black. On the right an area is lit. There is a coat rack on the wall. A yellow raincoat, a yellow rain hat and a black umbrella are hanging from the rack. On the floor, under the rack, are placed yellow wellies.
I was Naked, Smelling of Rain by Aidan Moesby (perfor-
mance, 2022). Photo: Aidan Moesby

There is still a binary between mainstream and disability arts. Disability Arts is characterised by art rooted in the lived experience. This is accompanied by the mainstream view that this is not ‘good art’. It tends not to be shown in galleries but down the corridor to the toilet as a community project at best. This tends to reflect the negative stereotypes of disabled people being unreliable, not very good at things and that they have little societal view because they cannot contribute as much as the normative population. Thankfully some of this has changed. Disabled artists are more and more being shown in mainstream institutional settings exhibiting critically robust work responding to contemporary issues.  

However, disabled artists still face many invisible, systemic barriers within the normative structures of the art world to having a sustainable arts practice. This ranges from no access the buildings, studios or events, a lack of relevant opportunities through structural systems within institutions, and a lack of flexibility to accommodate additional needs. This is in addition to the barriers rooted in being disabled in a world not designed for them. The physical, emotional and sensory issues associated with this create extra cost and extra labour in being disabled.  

When we talk of an accessibility, what exactly do we mean? Accessibility for whom? When I think about access, I think about access across everything we do as curators considering the artist, the audience, the organisation and those involved in less direct ways with the work.  

How do we work with these ideals when much of what we are talking about is addressing things which are not necessarily concrete, and are even termed ‘invisible barriers’? What can complicate things further is that people experience these barriers to inclusion differently and require different solutions to remove them. For example, when we are thinking about safe working practices, we must be mindful that everyone experiences safety in a different way. As language and thought develop around these ideas and practices, new terms are adopted, now we are mindful of creating ‘safer’ spaces with shared responsibility for ensuring this. 

Towards New Worlds

In July 2024 an exhibition, Towards New Worlds, opened at MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, curated by me and featuring the work of 15 artists identifying as disabled, D/deaf and/or neurodivergent. The exhibition explores the current critical concerns in the contemporary world, including justice, ecological consciousness, connectivity and care. The work is critically robust and vital, responding to these important issues from the individual perspective of the artist but they are not solely about the lived experience of disability. It may reference this, as all art references the creator, but it is not a ‘Disabled Artists’ or ‘Disability Arts’ exhibition. It does not exist in a silo, which is usually marginalised. 

Drawing of a garden with plants, a bird and cats. Fish are swimming in the air. "Home sweet home" is written in three flower pots. One flower pot is named mouse house. A sad, clown-like figure is sitting in the grass in the middle of the image.
Isolation by Carrie Ravencroft (watercolour drawing, 2019).

I will next give a context to how this exhibition came about. I hope to be able to highlight many of the things I view as important to having a sustainable practice as a disabled artist.  

In 2020 I was Disabled Curator in Residence at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, MIMA. The residency was part of a programme called Future Curators, supported by Disability Arts Shropshire. Three art institutions – MIMA, Wysing Arts Centre and Midlands Arts Centre MAC – worked with three disabled curators within a residency programme over a year. Before that could occur, each institution had to undergo a program of disability awareness training. Projects were developed in collaboration with the chosen curator, with each organisation having a particular speciality for the curator to work with. For example, MIMA has its own collection, Wysing is located in a rural area and MAC is a multidisciplinary arts centre in a city. 

My previous experience of such settings has been working as a stealth project by an institution to tick a diversity box. I had to do a lot of unpaid emotional labour and be mined for my knowledge and expertise around inclusion, diversity and accessibility. 

This was not the case at MIMA. The role was genuinely about me gaining experience as a curator in an institutional setting. Everyone on the team knew why I was there and who I was. Everyone was interruptible. I was embedded in all the various teams. Of course, we had conversations about disability and access, but it was negotiated, contextual.  

Everything about this project was access and care first. This started with the application process which gave many formats to apply and many formats of information. The interview process was equally considerate of additional needs, including information on how to travel to the building in audio and photo story form to options on timings, seating in the room, light levels and so on.   

Prior to my residency, I had been vocal about the state of play regarding the lack of disability representation and the importance of inclusion and care within the visual arts. This largely fell on doors which were not answered, and the drawbridges remained tightly drawn. Because I was now in an institution, what I had to say was suddenly listened to with different ears – I was being introduced to different tables. I suddenly had validation bestowed – although that also meant I had to learn some strategic thinking and no longer always shoot form the hip. What I said and how I behaved had consequences for them. They could not risk reputational damage for example if I was criticising another institution on social media the way I could as an individual.  

Before I started my residency, I did an access document – which was frequently returned to. I was empowered, enabled to do the best I possibly could. The experience has informed my critical thinking, it has made me a better or more considerate curator and artist. I have been able to empower others and feel heard. 

This was a truly transformative experience that has enabled me to develop my practice and place care front and centre of everything I try to do. I do not always succeed but I feel this ‘failure’ is an important part of learning. It allows me to reflect on what happened and how things could be done differently. Note here I do not use the word ‘better’. This is a deliberate, intentional choice to avoid perjorative language. Using language that focuses on right and wrong, good or bad, has a tendency to foster negative reactions. This influences how people feel regarding what they are doing. In the extreme it may evoke a ‘what’s the point’, or to feeling ‘punished’ for not being ‘good enough’. This has the effect of stopping the progress of attempting to breakdown systemic issues which act as barriers to inclusion for disabled people. I have heard many organisations speaking of the fear of getting it wrong. In reality, this feels like an excuse for doing nothing at all. 

What Do We Care for and How? 

People often talk about the Latin root of curating as being curae – to care, as if this quick reference is enough acknowledgment of the fundamentally important act of caring. Caring is a verb, an act, the intention needs to be followed through, otherwise it becomes meaningless. Similarly, many acts of care only go so far as caring for the art work, ensuring a rarefied atmosphere, the right amount of light, humidity and temperature as if it were a very delicate, fragile flower. Often the same care is not extended to the artist, the workers in the institution, the audience or anyone else in the art ecosystem not fortunate enough to be in the 1% of the extremely successful and therefore privileged. 

For any new project, the first lines in the budgets for me have to be access and care. These need to be embedded from the start and not added in at the end as an afterthought or as a virtue signal. It has to be real, authentic and considered. Access and care are conversations which need returned to over the period of the project. Situations change, we may find ourselves in an environment where we have never been and realise an adaption previously not necessary is now required, for example. We are not in static physical, mental or sensory states and this needs to be considered and discussed when necessary. 

When I am thinking about the time frame of a project, I try to extend it to allow for the unforeseen, with myself and those who I’m working with. We all have health variations, energy levels, unexpected life events. What we are essentially raising here is crip time. Some disabled people might experience time in a less linear form than the normative population. The day of a disabled person can be dominated by the time it takes to mediate the impacts of impairments or health conditions. It might not be structured in the same time and normative way of routine of the majority of society.  

Since my residency with MIMA ended I have continued a formal and informal relationship with the organisation. This maintenance of my relationship enabled me to propose an exhibition with MIMA. Over time we developed the idea and approximately three years later the exhibition Towards New Worlds opened. Nothing, or very few things like this occur overnight. 

(Re)Searching the Invisible

Looking for disabled artists for an exhibition project, for example, is a job made more difficult due to the nature of the complexity of many disabled artists lives, juggling art and health and everything else in life. How do disabled artists create visibility, when they do not have exhibitions (perhaps ironically because of lack of visibility), can not necessarily go to openings and do the ‘being seen’ or the talking to the ‘right people’. Many disabled artists do not have a studio which also impacts on visibility, and some may not have websites for various reasons from ability, digital poverty or health reasons or issues around the digital world. This makes being seen, selected and visible incredibly difficult.  

The research process for Towards New Worlds allowed me to think about which artists and works I wanted to include. From there I identified what the overall connecting themes were, what the project was about and, just as important, what it definitely was not about. Eventually I could distil the information to why this theme, why now, why these artists, what do I want the exhibition to say and do, and why this gallery?  

For example, I was very interested in Sam Metz’s work Unpredictable Bodies (2022) and their later work Mud Flats and Porosity (2023). When I saw Molly Martin’s work in the Ulster Royal Academy, show I could draw multiple links with the body, the boundary where the body and the world connect and touch through something other than the literal connection of skin. Martins’ body losing control in the cold river water as a metaphor for the experience of epilepsy, resonated with the act of stimming and care within Metz’s work. Further connections evolved when I was reflecting on Malgorzata Dawidek’s works Holding Patterns and Diagnoses and Reconstructions (2018). All three artists attend to the body, nature and care together with the experience of the body as a site in nature in three very different ways, using different media. 

A large wooden ring sculpture in a gallery space. A screen is visible through the ring, displaying an image of a landscape of a muddy field.
Mud Flats by Sam Metz. A short film of the intertidal mud flats
of the Humber Estuary shows moving sediments. The film is pre-
sented through a plywood sculpture clad with tiles made from
Humber mud. Photo: G. Semple 2023 / Gallery 87

The interconnectedness of ecology, the body and care became more concrete and enabled the curation of the show to crystallise and choose work around these general themes which have been interpreted very broadly. In the case of Metz and Dawidek, myself and Helen Welford (head curator at MIMA) were interested to see where they could take the work and themes. They were therefore commissioned to make new work for the exhibition. One further commission was created for an artist in the early stage of their practice. It was awarded to Carrie Ravenscroft as a further commitment to the development of disabled artists. 

Access Riders

There is a lot of administration and legal requirements involved when working at an institutional level and this can be overwhelming. The experience is far removed from the more do-it-yourself aesthetic I am used to of exhibition making. The embedding of care, however, created a template for the execution of the project. In engaging the artists, access riders became an essential tool. Each artist included in Towards New Worlds was required to submit an access document stating what adjustments they may need, what considerations need to be taken into account. These documents were returned to throughout the work.  

Often it is very simple pragmatic things, for example what is the preferred form of communication: e-mail, telephone, whatsapp or zoom? Of course, an institution needs to be able to trace communications and agreements, in a more robust and accountable manner. Some alternative ways of communicating make creating the necessary paper trails more difficult than others, but it is workable. 

Access riders might also help to reconsider labour. Labour is not just the time we are at the desk, the studio or the institution. We need to consider the whole process: the preparation, the execution and the recovery. If, for example, someone travels to a talk, they may need to travel the night before and stay in a hotel. After presenting the talk, the next day may be a day where executive functions are impaired and physical and emotional tiredness makes working impossible. This part of the overall labour should be recognised as such and compensated for within the fee.  

The ultimate aim is creating the conditions so that everyone can work within, or as close to, their optimum situation as possible. 

Digital Access

How do we care for the audience? How do we curate an accessible exhibition? Such an easy, direct question that belies its complexity. Often within a cohort of disabled people there are contrasting and conflicting needs regarding accessibility. We need to accept that we cannot make everything accessible to everyone at the same time. For example, someone may require bright lights and another person more dim lighting. For someone, physical access is the key over emotional or sensory access, and for another artist it is vice versa. One size cannot fit all and whilst it is not practical or feasible to create multiple versions of an exhibition, we can use specific days or events to reduce or highlight some conditions to reduce barriers and include those otherwise excluded. 

We no longer live in a purely physical world. Indeed, some people live almost entirely mediated by the digital. However, we must not lose sight of the importance of meeting in physical spaces in a ‘safely’ accessible way. 

The digital realm for galleries and cultural institutions is becoming increasingly important as part of their ‘offer’. Now we can have multiple versions of the same work with a range of access adjustments. For example, when I curated the exhibition Thresholds in 2020 as part of my residency at MIMA, the moving image work had three versions: a version with no access adaptations, an audio described version and a captioned version. The multiple versions were held on a mirrored site. Like many access tools and adaptations, they required more time and commitment than actual money to make. Very often organisations and institutions use finance as an excuse not to do something. 

Traditional Structures and Structural Change

The physical exhibition space has lots of traditions around how we do things in the gallery – how high things are hung, how information on the art works is presented on the labels, how the visitor is expected to be able to navigate the space. All based on the ‘normative’. For Towards New Worlds some works are tactile, we have considered gallery seating and how each work will be experienced. There is an accompanying audio curators tour, all moving image is captioned and audio described and there is varying digital mediation and interpretation. 

Exhibitions are usually accompanied by a public program, starting with the opening. This may be a site for anxiety or inaccessible for sensory and physical reasons, however there is now a move to have split openings with the first hour being designed with access in mind, altering the sound or light in the space, and the next hour being the traditional opening format. The public program beyond this must also be considering access and care. Again, thinking about who it is for, why is it necessary, what is it trying to do or say? 

Following the exhibition, it is equally important to have transparent, clear communication with the artists over the de-install and return of the work. Care, inclusion, equality and access do not stop because the exhibition has closed. This post-exhibition time is also essential to reflect on what worked and what could be done in a different way. 

The Future

In the last five years the conversation around disability, equity and inclusion has significantly developed within the cultural world. Noticeably though it seems to be much more developed and enacted within the performance and dance worlds, where disabled-led works play to sold out audiences in mainstream venues. One of the biggest challenges for the visual arts is, how can we begin to replicate this success and change the perception and representation of disabled visual artists? And how can we increase the rate of change?  

Jenni-Juulia speaking to a microphone in a gallery space, she is wearing a colourful outfit and she has a crutch. She is surrounded by audience member and abstract sculpture works.
Artist Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen performing at the opening of
the exhibition Towards New Worlds at MIMA. Courtesy of MIMA. Photo:
Rachel Deakin

When I look at Finland from afar, I see many examples of good practice. The existence of Culture for All as a cultural access beacon is a significant sign of intent for the direction of travel but there is also the Saari Residency’s inclusion work and independent thinking such as The Feminist Culture House in Helsinki. Unfortunately, like much of the arts, including artists, the sustainability of this is dependent on funding. 

I am optimistic about the potential for change. The conversations about care, the use of artists access documents, the conversations about decolonialising and democratising spaces are all encouraging. The question now is, how do we enact these conversations and embed change in the art institutions to remove the barriers to authentic, meaningful inclusion and representation.