The fragile ghost of disability: Jannick Deslauriers’ recreation of the wheelchair as fibre art

Raffia,

by Nanette Ashby

On an August day in 2022, I walked through the doors of the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, stepping into the modern entrance hall filled with eager visitors. After a morning exploring the city, I could feel the symptoms of my chronic illness flaring up which made standing in line increasingly painful. This was my first trip since my diagnosis two years ago and I was still coming to terms with the new limitations of my body. Dutch art museums usually provide in-house wheelchairs available for visitors; luckily this appears to be a universal service. After navigating through the popular parts of the museum, doing my best not to roll into any visitors, I found myself in the basement dedicated to contemporary art. An object in the far corner of the room caught my eye. 

On a round white pedestal stood the ghost of a wheelchair made from translucent grey and light pink fabric, seemingly about to collapse in on itself. It piqued my curiosity. How was it able to keep its shape? I assumed it was held up by fishing wire attached to the ceiling, but, approaching this life-sized shell of a mobility aid, I couldn’t figure it out. Sitting in a wheelchair was providing me with a new vantage point to inspect the sculpture closely. Threads were left hanging, the fabric was delicate, as if it could blow over any second. The accompanying description informed me it was made from a combination of aluminium wire and tubing, nylon tubing, polyester tulle, polyester lace with sequins, cotton and polyester thread. The Canadian artist Jannick Deslauriers (1983), created “chaise roulante” as part of her series “Relic: Body Extension” in 2014.

As a newly disabled person, with a dynamic and invisible disability I was intrigued by this interpretation. What does this translation of a wheelchair into a fabric sculpture communicate to the museum visitor?

“Chaise roulante” is one of two sculptures the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts acquired from Deslauriers‘ series “Relic: Body Extension” in 2019. The Montréal based artist is known for her life-sized textile sculptures “which explore ethereality and fragility through the construction of delicate yet intricate translucent objects” (Concordia 2022). Deslauriers got her BFA in Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal, in 2008, where she was able to explore fashion design and costume making. She specialises in recreating generalised objects, such as a typewriter, a crane, electric poles, a car involved in a crash and a tank into soft fabric sculptures. Deslauriers graduated from the Yale School of Art with a MFA in Sculpture in 2022.

The choice of object, in this case a wheelchair, is in accordance with the rest of her oeuvre. The wheelchair is used “as an artefact of every day life”, thus not afforded a second thought by its user like the electro lines we walk by every day (Borowska-Beszta 2018, 210). The “wheelchair acts as a silent helper. It also plays the role of a prosthesis” (Borowska-Beszta 2018, 219). However, unlike the other objects, mobility aids and their users are not “almost invisible in their banality” but draw extra attention when seen in public spaces (Roseo 2021). It is common for disabled artists to somehow contextualise their work within their lived experiences as a disabled person, be it through the choice of topics, materials, or production process. This is usually indicated in the description displayed with the work. This was not the case here. Historically however, disabled artists including Monet, Edward Munch and Toulouse Lautrec have not been recognized as such, since it was and often still is regarded as defamatory and unrelated to their work (Ware 2011, 195). “A fact that is in sharp contrast to the present moment, when disability arts expose and exploit the myriad ways to claim disability identity as a “filter” on their worlds” (Ware 2011, 195). In this case, there is no mention of a disability, so Deslauriers’ choice is on the one hand surprising, and on the other indicates a lack of experience using mobility aids in public and possibly literacy in disabled art and culture. So why this particular object?

Photograph taken by the author in the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, August 2022.

“Chaise roulante” measures 97 x 79 x 100cm, a rough approximation of the wheelchair I was sitting in myself. The aluminium tubing and wiring worked into the sculpture bear the weight of keeping it in shape. The black cotton and polyester threads give the sculpture definition. “Thin black lines outline the pieces’ edges, and translucid, clear fabrics are used as a three-dimensional evolution of drawing” (Roseo 2021). The threads are left hanging, providing the sculpture with the illusion of movement. Deslauriers used predominantly light pink, grey (reminiscent of metal pieces) and white polyester tulle and lace, embellished with sequins to create a floral pattern on the translucent fabric over the seat and backrest. The result created an air of femininity and melancholy.  The threads danced in the wind created by my own wheelchair, enhancing the feeling of fragility and anxiety the sculpture was unravelling.

My sense of unease was also down to the general shape of the wheelchair. As is Delauriers’ process, the sculpture was a generalisation of a wheelchair, based on images she collected via the internet and then combined into a fictive approximation (Concordia 2022). This sculpture included elements of antiquated wooden wheelchairs and those used in hospitals, not the type of wheelchair commonly used by an individual in daily life. Based on interviews conducted by Borowska-Beszta, the worst wheelchairs “are heavy, massive, raw and old constructed, resembling artefacts from medical cultures, hospitals but also from horror movies, completely preventing and limiting any form of independence” (Borowska-Beszta 2018, 220). These shapes were visibly integrated in Deslauriers’ interpretation, leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the disabled viewer. For most wheelchair users it is considered an extension to the body, like a prosthetic or clothing. This type of mobility aid is fitted just as precisely to the needs and wants of the user, be it aesthetically or in construction and materials (Borowska-Beszta 2018, 219-220). The chairs’ decoration and its use as a part of the whole outfit is crucial (Kuppers 2007, 81). It can be argued that Delauriers’ reconstruction in fabric equates the wheelchair to just another item of clothing worn by the wheelchair user, thus normalising its use.  

The theme of fragility ties Deslauriers oeuvre together. In this case, it creates an interesting juxtaposition. A wheelchair’s main purpose is to support and take the weight of the wheelchair user. For that, the frame needs to be a solid construction of metal or carbon fibre. However, the fabric sculpture is delicate, unpredictable and on the verge of collapsing. Wheelchair users also usually prefer lighter carbon fibre frames to make manoeuvring easier. The sculpture’s fragility can be connected to the lived experience of disabled people. The flimsiness and anxiety sewn into the sculpture is a constant companion to disabled people. Healthcare, government aid, job security, accessibility and basic human rights are not a given and can collapse or be revoked at any time. The sculpture embodies this lack of stability and support. As with Deslauriers’ other sculptures, “each fabric she uses is transparent, which speaks to the hidden politics lurking behind commonly used objects and goods” (Sierzputowski 2018).

The contemporary artist Margarita Cabrera from El Paso, Texas, has a similar approach to textile sculpture. She builds soft sculptures of everyday items (e.g. coffee makers or vacuum cleaners) by using colourful vinyl fabric instead of the plastic parts produced in Mexico. Cabrera strives to “create visual metaphors that reflect the physical and psychological effects of living along the Mexican border” (Hung and Magliaro 2007, 32). This is underlined by her choice to make the sewing process part of the artwork, visually representing the worn-out labourers. Deslauriers’ process is comparable, the traces of her labour are visible in the same way. This creates the palpable exhaustion surrounding “chaise roulante”. Because of its materiality, the chair is on the verge of folding in on itself. 

The themes of manual labour and care are amplified within craft practices and fibre art. Over the past 15 years, craftsmanship has experienced a renaissance from within the contemporary art field, which indicates “that the labor problem is being examined critically” and actively incorporated into works of art (Smith 2016, 84). Craft encompasses many forms of making such as pottery or knitting and is not exclusively practised by artists. Modern and contemporary art history has not paid much attention to craft due to its connection to common manufacturing processes, and thus labour and its fixation on everyday mass-produced items. As Buszek argues, “a dominant aspect of contemporary craft has been in artists’ focus upon its economic, gender and class associations in relation to the labor necessary for its production” (Buszek 2011, 73). Similarly to the preconceptions about disabled people, craft is often considered an unseen, undignified and categorically difficult to define (Smith 2016, 82). However, craft provides the opportunity to link different lived experiences and cultures with one another.

Deslauriers takes advantage of this phenomenon. Her preferred choice in medium and production process connects the idea of crafting as caring and the labour characteristic to fibre art with the labour of caregiving. Her choice in object, a wheelchair, is a symbol of disability, and care is commonly associated with disability and femininity. Indeed, “Caring for another human being takes a unique toll, both mentally and physically. This is predominantly experienced by women, as they make up most of the world’s private caregivers” (Schmidt 2022). Women’s labour and femininity began to be associated with textile hand craft such as embroidery or sewing as early as the 1500s (Emery 2019, 106). By equating needlework crafts with femininity, the ideology of distinct gender roles was established and reinforced (Emery 2019, 106). Deslauriers used pink lace, inadvertently or intentionally feminising the “chaise roulante”. Deslauriers’ work has embedded itself into the wider history of fibre art by utilising themes of women’s domestic labour and textiles associated with femininity.

The liberation of textiles from the domestic use and labour assigned to women provided the opportunity for the development of textile art as an artform during the 1960s and 70s. This period was characterised by an upsurge of textile artists, ordinarily “undervalued within the discourse of male-centred visual arts” (Emery 2019, 103). Because of their association with the domestic sphere, the materials lent themselves to embodying the resistance to and subversion of the male dominated culture. This evolution coincided with the second wave of feminism and inspired artists to reinvigorate this material to create a new feminist visual language. Textiles provided a canvas on which feminist artists could interrogate the history of women’s lives and the patriarchal structures those lives had to adhere to. This repurposing of women’s traditional labour led to fibre art supplying a distinct visual aesthetic “free from the associations of the commercial male-dominated art world” (Emery 2019, 113). Due to its unique qualities such as “the effect of gravity upon it, its manipulable shape, and varying surface qualities”, fibre catered to the experimentations with abstraction, undiluted interactions with the textiles and curiosity in making processes of the time (Auther 2002, 4). By taking advantage of this special materiality, the contemporary feminist principle of the personal being political was visualised. Textile’s physicality encompasses many possible associations, including the repetitive movements involved in needlework. “Chaise roulante” incorporates this connotation as using a wheelchair involves similarly repetitive hand movement, pushing the wheels to propel the wheelchair forward. 

The wheelchair and other types of mobility aids are recurring objects in Deslauriers work. More generally, she is meshing her process with “equipment and items that are associated with spaces such as amusement parks, retirement homes, hospitals, prisons or even cemeteries” (Concordia 2022). However, since the creation of “chaise roulante” in 2014, Deslauriers has expanded her choice in materials. Recently she has added wax, steel and ash to her repertoire, thus expanding the type of her labour into the more masculine domain of welding. This shift in materiality is responsible for the addition of “associations with burning, fracturing, enveloping, suturing, cremation and regeneration, finally emerging as fragile yet disturbing bodily apparatuses” (Concordia 2022). Her exhibition entitled, Swirling into Ashes hosted by Concordia University in Montréal in 2022, showcased these adaptations to her work including sculptural renditions of mobility aids. Even though the materiality of Deslauriers’ work has shifted, it is possible to assume that the use of this specific signifier, the wheelchair, has not.

The wheelchair houses many narratives which are not exclusive to disability culture but have reached the rest of the world (Kuppers 2007, 81). Deslauriers’ new choice in materials arguably imitates “the contact of metal and flesh, remembering other encounters – bullets in flesh, bombs, the hardware of warfare and its  aftermath, the veteran’s paraphernalia. Immobility and wounding are the stereotypes of disability carried by the chair” (Kuppers 2007, 82). Wheelchairs are “designed and created for users with dysfunctions in the sphere of motion, that can be congenital or acquired. It is not generally a typical artefact for other disability cultures” (Borowska-Beszta 2018, 216). However, outside of disability cultures, it is used as the general symbol for the internally diverse category of disability, traditionally considered a “symbol of restraint”, not a mere tool that can provide the user with mobility and independence (Kuppers 2007, 86).

Deslauriers work focuses on the objects, not on the individuals using them. She instrumentalized their absence. The image of an empty wheelchair is more potent, amplifying the sadness and tragedy already associated with disability, by indicating the loss of former users who no longer need its services. It uncovers that “at the heart of its signification is loss – including culture’s loss of how to deal with difference” (Kuppers 2007, 84). Disability often comes with loss of independence and control, loss of the life one had envisioned, loss of social interactions and connections and loss of dignity (Kuppers 2007, 82).

There is also a strong association of disability feminising and infantilising the individual (Kuppers 2007, 82). Disabled people are disempowered for depending on other people’s support and care. It is possible to equate the lower social status of disabled people with the position of women in the social hierarchy. The colour and fabric choice of “chaise roulante” hints at this phenomenon. The “tragic victim, super cripple, or maniacal villain (driven to evil by the misfortune of an unbearable disability)” are common stereotypes associated with disabled people, which nondisabled artists can harness to add tension to their work (Ott 2005, 13). Because of the regurgitation of entrenched stereotypes of disabled people either being “persevering heroes or objects of pity”, the historical representations, if found in heritage institutions such as “chaise roulante”, can be discrepant (Ott 2005, 11).

Historically, the lives of disabled people were categorically devalued and extinguished. It is crucial to “interrogate the impulse to frame disability as a fate worse than death”, not only because the lives of disabled people are just as rich and worth living as those of non-disabled people, but because this ideology is still at play, negatively impacting every aspect of disabled people’s lives (Ware 2011, 196). Deslauriers marries “the complex metaphors and politics attached to cloth, fibrous materials, and the textile industry” with the wheelchair, an object which, outside of disabled culture, embodies loss, tragedy, and a life not worth living (Smith 2016, 83).

The WHO currently counts 1 billion disabled people around the world. It is estimated that the actual number is much higher than that. The threat of acquiring a disability is a constant reality. Deslauriers’ intentional use of the wheelchair, especially within her exhibition from 2022, is “underlining the ephemeral character of tangible reality and at the same time, a symbol of our times, staging an omnipresent theme in contemporary media communication: the culture of disaster, terror and decay” (Roseo 2021). She takes advantage of the anxiety of becoming disabled and the “negative stereotypes and narrative shortcuts a chair often provides”, conventionally equating disability with tragedy (Kuppers 2007, 81). Instead, she could have more thoroughly engaged with the rich “symbolic network that intersects with identity, ideology, language, politics, social oppression, and the body” which disability provides (Ware 2011, 195). 

Disability is commonly characterised by isolation. Depending on the disability, the lives of disabled people are contained within the four walls of their home. Historically, women’s lives were also tied to the home, in which they had to perform domestic labour, including taking care of disabled family members. When disabled people, especially those using mobility aids, need to take part in public life, they are faced with a widespread lack of accessibility. “For many wheelchair users, the very decision to venture into public places is emotionally turbulent” (Cahill and Eggleston 1994, 302). Wheelchair users especially must overcome emotional and physical hurdles when performing everyday tasks “because the physical environment, both natural and constructed, is unfriendly to their mode of mobility” (Cahill and Eggleston 1994, 302). Meanwhile, they are responsible for “managing both their own and others’ emotions”, be it unease, frustration, or embarrassment (Cahill and Eggleston 1994, 303). This can be linked back to the so-called “Ugly Laws” which were instrumentalized to actively exclude disabled people from public spaces. These laws were designed to persecute against beggars and the homeless as well as disabled people under the guise of protecting the public from the upset and repulsion of their existence in public. In England such a law was already in place in 1729. Some of these “ugly laws” were only repealed in the 1970s (Schwules Museum 2024). Nowadays, “most adults indeed accord wheelchair users the surface acceptance of civil inattention in public places”, however the emotions responsible for the “ugly laws” are still at play (Cahill and Eggleston 1994, 304). As Ott observes, “how disability is portrayed (or not portrayed) is directly related to core cultural values” (Ott 2005, 13). Even though these direct attacks on the freedom of disabled people are no longer in place, the ideology behind them persists. These layers of emotions attached themselves to the frame of the wheelchair, be it the object or symbol.

A consensus of exhibition traditions concerning disabled art and history is visible within heritage institutions. As a public space, the museum is entrusted to be a place of objectivity and neutrality. Visitors are not encouraged to interrogate the curated representation of, in this case, art history. However, this cultivates issues such as sexism and ableism by excluding minorities. Luckily, “greater understanding of diversity and of the importance of interpreting the history of all people has begun to push inclusion beyond simple access issues and into content” (Ott 2005, 11). This includes visitor education, which many museums do not have the financial resources or proficiency to provide their visitors with (Ott 2005, 23).

The addition of “chaise roulante” to the exhibition floor is curious. It is a strange way to add disability representation to the museum, since it does not reflect the true values and associations wheelchair users have with the mobility aid. One of the mandates of The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts is to represent more Canadian Artists. Deslauriers is part of a group of contemporary artists whose work was acquired to reach this goal. Nothing suggests that the addition of “chaise roulante” was to increase disability representation. However, the museum is responsible for the harmful stereotypes “chaise roulante” perpetuates.

By translating the wheelchair into a melancholic, fragile, fabric sculpture, Deslauriers re enforces the stereotype of the wheelchair as an object of tragedy. Disability is a metaphor for inadequacy and human disqualification, which Deslauriers exploits to add dramatic or sentimental value to her sculpture. Craft and textile art were considered domestic, private, isolated, and feminine, just as disability is “understood as a private, personal, usually shameful affliction”, confined to the house (Ott 2005, 13). The medium of craft “rises significant political questions about our values regarding things and the labour involved in making them” (Smith 2016, 80). Deslauriers highlights the labour involved in caregiving, usually provided by women. Like the status of women and disabled people, fibre art was “neglected, denigrated and treated with derision” (Emery 2019, 120). Feminist textile art of the 1970s was “revolutionary in its claim that the creative work of all women was worthy of serious examination” (Emery 2019, 120). The next frontier will be the fight for the respect and inclusion of art made by disabled people. For some of us, “the wheelchair is a cherished cultural object invested with a fascination well beyond what narration or function might warrant. As “real” objects wheelchairs are transporters full of weight, texture, and sensation” (Kuppers 2007, 88). 

As a disabled person, using a wheelchair at the time, the sculpture evoked a wide range of emotions for me, from fascination to sadness and frustration. It confirmed and contextualised my experiences since my diagnosis and using wheelchairs in public. My museum experience was in line with that of many disabled people, who “will continue to feel like unwelcome dinner guests at a table overflowing with victuals” (Ott 2005, 24). After one more circle around the sculpture, I slowly made my way back to the Museum entrance. I did my best to ignore the looks by fellow visitors. My arms were tired from the labour of driving myself through the expansive museum. Giving back the wheelchair was not straightforward, as per usual. That visit made it clear to me that, as part of the first generation to acknowledge and take advantage of disability rights and awareness, there is still a long way to go, and any progress is fragile. 

References:

  • Auther, Elissa. 2002. Classification and Its Consequences: The Case of “Fibre Art”. American Art, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), 2-9. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
  • Borowska-Beszta, Beata. 2018. Disability Cultures and Artifacts. Wheelchair as Silent Helper and Little Black Dress. Humanities Bulletin, Vol. 1, Number 1, 210-223. 
  • Buszek, Maria Elena. 2011. “Labor is my Medium”: Some Perspective(s) on Contemporary Craft. Archives of American Art Journal, FALL 2011, Vol. 50, No. 3 / 4 (FALL 2011), 66-75. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
  • Cahill, Spencer, and Robin Eggleston. 1994. Managing Emotions in Public: The Case of Wheelchair Users. Social Psychology Quarterly, Dec., 1994, Vol. 57, No. 4, 300-312. American Sociological Association.
  • Emery, Elizabeth. 2019. “Subversion stiches: Needlework as activism in Australian feminist art of the 1970s.” In Everyday Revolutions Remaking Gender, Sexuality and Culture in 1970s Australia by Michelle Arrow and Angela Woollacott, Chapter 6, 103-120. ANU Press.
  • Hung, Shu, and Joseph Magliaro. 2007. By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
  • Kuppers, Petra. 2007. The Wheelchair’s Rhetoric: The Performance of Disability. TDR (1998-), Winter, Vol. 51, No. 4, 80-88. The MIT Press.
  • Ott, Katherine. 2005. Disability and the Practice of Public History: An Introduction. The Public Historian, Vol. 27, No.2 (Spring 2005), 9-24. University of California Press on behalf of the National Council on Public History.
  • Smith, T’ai. 2016. The Problem with Craft. Art Journal, Spring 2016, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Spring 2016), 80-84. CAA.
  • Ware, Linda. 2011. When Art Informs: Inviting Ways to See the Unexpected. Council for Learning Disabilities, Learning Disabilities Quarterly 34(3), 194-202. Sage Publications, Inc..
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