Materializing a Mad Aesthetic Through the Making of Politicized Fibre Art

The field of Disability Studies not only acknowledges the value of creative production, it also turns to it as a way to craft knowledge. However, this project asserts that it is not enough for the field to support and promote Deaf, mad, and disabled artists by documenting and analyzing our practices through qualitative and/or quantitative research. Calling into question the focus that Disability Studies puts on access and inclusion, this studio-based project interrupts this discourse with the methodological approach of research-creation and the theoretical frameworks of Mad Studies and Critical Craft Praxis. My creative work intervenes in the text, positioning the knowledge created as knowledge in making based in the provocation of change and movement. Instead of looking inward at my own experiences, as mediated through my identity, I make to look outward. I turn to craft, specifically fibre-based practices like quilting and nature-based dyeing, as a way to make sense of the world around me. Craft is what makes me feel things. It forces me to see big pictures, look outside of myself, get raw, question my long-held beliefs, be uncomfortable, desire to do better in this world. Craft can be that space where we come together, commune with each other, hold one another, see the beauty and the ugly together, and struggle through the really tough shit. Key themes that have emerged from this performative research include the significance of commodifying identity as a process of depoliticizing creative work, the transformative possibilities of disrupting simplified notions of community, the role of the audience in the creative process, the role of nature in the vulnerability of craft as object and anti-colonial praxis, and the ability for quilts to be sculptural and layered with meaning. In my final reflection I feel as though I have ended with more questions than concluding statements. And yet with more questions than answers, this dissertation has accomplished what it set out to do: use Mad Studies and Critical Craft Praxis as a way to create ruptures, open up space for exploration, engage with ideas, and create new lines of inquiry.