{"id":338124,"date":"2018-12-04T17:02:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T01:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/?p=338124"},"modified":"2026-02-12T17:20:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:20:49","slug":"dvp-interview-jennifer-justice-and-alice-wong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2018\/12\/04\/dvp-interview-jennifer-justice-and-alice-wong\/","title":{"rendered":"DVP Interview: Jennifer Justice and Alice Wong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alice Wong interviewed Jennifer Justice for the Disability Visibility Project\u00ae\u00a0at StoryCorps San Francisco on May 21, 2016. Jennifer shares her experiences learning about other disabled artists during art school and the importance of teaching students about artists from underrepresented communities. Jennifer also talks about the importance of disability identity and finding community as an artist.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1360\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F539936139&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxwidth=1360&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;dnt=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Text Transcript<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><b>JENNIFER JUSTICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: When you\u2019re a young disabled person, I didn\u2019t have a lot of good, positive role models to look up to. So, and you know, I didn\u2019t feel like I had a script to go by. I didn\u2019t, you know, I knew I wasn\u2019t gonna live the life of Helen Keller or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and beyond that, I didn\u2019t really know, have any other role models to look to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE WONG<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Not even artists with disabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>JENNIFER<\/strong>: Yeah, yeah. I mean and then there was Frida Kahlo, and I was like, well, maybe. [chuckles] But I\u2019m not her either, you know?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Mmhmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JENNIFER<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: So, I didn\u2019t really have a road map, and I didn\u2019t, I really couldn\u2019t imagine my life as an adult. And I really had trouble imagining what I would do as an adult and how I would make a living. And this was before the computer technology caught up with, I mean before access technology was available to me. So, I really didn\u2019t know. There was a big question mark for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Mmhmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JENNIFER<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: You know, now I feel like really fortunate to be able to talk about other disabled artists that I know, either know personally or have learned about over the years. Because that wasn\u2019t a part of the curriculum. It was primarily white, dead guys, you know, dead white guys that you learn about in an art historical context. So, I really am excited to be able to expose young people to artists with disabilities and artists of color and people that you don\u2019t always find in the canon, that you don\u2019t necessarily get from the canon. And I feel like it\u2019s a responsibility, you know? It feels like a great responsibility to me to do that as a teacher.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: There are a lot of people with disabilities who wanna be seen as a artist only.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>JENNIFER<\/strong>: Mmhmm, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Versus an artist with a disability because they\u2019re often concerned about being pigeonholed or being seen as somehow the artwork is less, I don\u2019t know, cutting edge or whatever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JENNIFER<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Right. Mmhmm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: But I guess without being open and embracing your identity, you wouldn\u2019t be able to find that community of other disabled artists. And a simple question, but what is the power of community in terms of finding other disabled artists and being part of this community?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JENNIFER<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: You know, I wanna write about this, and I wanna think about it more deeply. I\u2019m starting to write about it because I think it\u2019s a pretty important topic. And I\u2019ve heard the term \u201cghettoized,\u201d you know: disabled artists don\u2019t wanna be ghettoized. I feel like those are terms that are bestowed upon us by the able-bodied, like what you called GLAM [galleries, libraries, archives, and museums] arts establishment. And I feel like I\u2019m a disabled and\/or artist, you know? It\u2019s pretty central to who I am, and it shapes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You know, when I was in art school [Art Institute of Chicago], I took a lot of performance art classes with Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish and other people, and it really helped me open up my concept in my body as sort of a holistic instrument instead of just being like an eyeball or a hand, eyeball-hand kinda [laughs] machine!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Or the mechanics of artwork.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>JENNIFER<\/strong>: Yeah, exactly! And so, I felt like oh, you know, I have all of these tools to draw from, and I have a whole body here [laughing] to work with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JENNIFER<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: I didn\u2019t wanna be, I felt like there was a little bit of a cult of Helen Keller in Alabama. There\u2019s a little bit of a cult of Helen Keller. [laughs] And so, I felt like you know, she was this, there was a little bit of her ghost kinda haunting me from being a partially-deafblind girl growing up in that state who\u2019s creative. And I just didn\u2019t wanna have that kind of reified miracle child persona.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>ALICE<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Sainthood.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>JENNIFER:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to be part of a group. I didn\u2019t wanna be, I didn\u2019t want that reified position of the genius artist who suffers in a attic somewhere and never marries and never has sex and is treated like sort of a, well, she really did do vaudeville, right? She did have to perform her disability for people, and so I was really afraid of that, that history. And so, I just wanted to \u00a0be part of a group. I wanted to be part of a community. And so, I think I knew that intuitively from a pretty young age, so I think it\u2019s a part of our history, and it\u2019s important. And so, it\u2019s something I think about a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Support Disability Media and Culture<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/donate\/\">DONATE<\/a> to the Disability Visibility Project<\/strong>\u00ae<strong>!<\/strong><\/p>\n<h4><\/h4>\n<h4>Suggested Reference<\/h4>\n<p>Disability Visibility Project\u00ae. (2018, December 4). DVP Interview: Jennifer Justice and Alice Wong. Retrieved from:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2018\/12\/04\/dvp-interview-jennifer-justice-and-alice-wong\/\">https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2018\/12\/04\/dvp-interview-jennifer-justice-and-alice-wong\/<\/a><\/p>\n<h4>Image description<\/h4>\n<p>On the left, Alice Wong an Asian American woman wearing a black jacket and black scarf with little white daggers. She is wearing a mask over her nose attached to a gray tube which is connected to her ventilator. On the right is\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jennifer Justice, young white woman with very light long blonde hair. She is wearing a heather gray scoopneck shirt. She is smiling at the camera.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Credits<\/h4>\n<p>Produced for the Disability Visibility Project\u00ae\u00a0by Alice Wong. Interview recorded by StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the story of our lives. For more: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.storycorps.org\">www.storycorps.org<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com\">www.disabilityvisibilityproject.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For any questions, please refer to the <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/about\/terms-of-useprivacy\/\">Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alice Wong interviewed Jennifer Justice for the Disability Visibility Project\u00ae\u00a0at StoryCorps San Francisco on May 21, 2016. Jennifer shares her experiences learning about other disabled artists during art school and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/2018\/12\/04\/dvp-interview-jennifer-justice-and-alice-wong\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue Reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">DVP Interview: Jennifer Justice and Alice Wong<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[548705951],"tags":[177,587152587,12710,1907,587152589,587152586,10372239,2005041,55897910,58990044,4572256,587152594,740246,587152588],"class_list":["post-338124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvp-interviews","tag-art","tag-art-school","tag-artist","tag-artists","tag-arts-community","tag-deafblind-people","tag-disability-community","tag-disability-culture","tag-disability-identity","tag-disability-representation","tag-disabled-artists","tag-frida-kahlo","tag-helen-keller","tag-role-models","post-has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/SFB003648_G1.jpg?fit=5184%2C3456&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4H7t1-1pXC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/disabilityvisibilityproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}