Serena Katt,

London College of Communication, UK.

Serena Katt explores how illustration can be used as an active tool for understanding, interpreting and re-evaluating dominant narratives and discourse about historical events. She is interested in exploring and highlighting the ways in which history is recorded, suppressed, remembered and distorted.

A response to the Disability tasks but specifically your addition of ‘Deaf – Accessibility for spoonies’ which I think is a thoughtful, honest and meaningful contribution to our readership of international academics, students and creatives.

This was a touring show, which visualises the protagonist’s invisible pain, by painting the affected parts of her body.

I loved how Khairani Barokka talked very clearly about the existence of a large gulf between what one person perceives as pain in their own body, and what another person, looking in, can perceive/believe/ understand. She says:

‘The shock of distance, of misunderstandings from human beings so close to our bodies, to the truth as we inhabit it in our bodies, can be something else entirely.’

Not being able to show someone how she felt, on an experiential level, and experiencing ‘miscomprehension’ led her to develop the show, which takes into account all aspects of her being (again, touching a lot on intersectionality) – not just her disability.

I was interested in thinking about how there is a gap between any two humans, where experience can never be fully shared. She talks about ‘the sheer impossibility of human communication’ which is why she makes art, to ‘attempt to bridge it anyway, by writing, speaking, creating, by existing in groups.’

She is interested in framing disability (disabled) as the opposite of enabled, rather than unable – which is psychologically important to her because as a woman of colour, she is so often told she is not valuable or equal. It was important for her to highlight her experiences: ‘I wanted people to know: academia and the arts, for some of us, are contact sports’ – they can be bruising and painful for disabled participants, and many of us are too rarely aware of this. She also really emphasised that ‘Women’s pain in particular, and brown women’s pain… is underestimated and undertreated.’

She says she paid so much attention to the show being accessible to others but gave up on including herself in this because it felt impossible (lack of local funding from Indonesia – a transnational issue, no means to pay herself etc.). By not working to alleviate her pain as much as possible she feels she actually denied herself the truth of her pain, in a show about ‘making pain apparent’. She concludes that we need to remember that accessibility should take into account all parties – not just the audience. She also realises the need for self-care and asking for help as well as doing more justice to her own needs.

This article asks both for more awareness in the reader, particularly around invisible disability, and also for the reader to bring themselves in more. I think even the act of reading it could give a lot to students. It could be used as a starting point for these two points: (1) reflecting on invisible disability and (2) reflecting on your own needs, and how you might take better care of them or where you could ask for more help – whether they are disability-related or not.