Hagiografía Crip/Octava de Navidad/Freakmas

interventions on found photographs
2020-2021

In this work I selected images of historical, pseudoscientific, social and promotional photographs of people with disabilities and/or deformities who worked as human phenomena or oddities in the traveling circuses of yesteryear. To link these precursors of disability art and culture (many of whom lived in situations of exploitation, trafficking, and slavery) to Christian saints, I crowned these individuals whose destinies were marked by their bodily difference, with halos. The resulting images, accompanied by a brief biography of each individual, were revealed on my Instagram account one each day during the Christmas Octave between December 25, 2020 and January 6, 2021. In order of appearance: ‘Krao ‘, Joseph Merrick, Saartjie Baartman, Annie Jones, Anna Swan, ‘Marechal Family’, ‘Maxine Mina’.