Between art therapy and disability aesthetics: a sociological approach for understanding the intersection between art practice and disability discourse

Abstract

What emerges as art and how it is categorised are parts of a collective process taking place in art worlds and involving a wide array of social actors. In this paper, the relation between four ways of framing the intersection of disability and art is discussed. These frames are art therapy, outsider art, disability art, and disability aesthetics. The paper suggests the frames and the way they relate to each other as important discourses in organising the relation between disability and art. The discourses’ relevance is demonstrated by discussing three cases of art practice among disabled people. The discussion of the cases demonstrates the importance of including more than one of the four identified discourses when analysing art practice involving disability. The concluding part discusses how the intersections of disability and art can be more closely linked to the mainstream art world through the concept of social practice art.