Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-15-2026
Abstract
Arts-based and artistic research as a critical disability studies (CDS) methodology is an artistic inquiry into material practices and social conditions around disabled lives, communities, and care systems that support justice and liberation for disabled people. This article examines interdisciplinary practices of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming disabled artists as forms of research. Artists Rora Blue, Alex Dolores Salerno, Yo-Yo Lin 林友友, and Finnegan Shannon critique social hierarchies and exclusions by deconstructing normative ideologies about access and embodiment. Through crip politics, their approaches explore disability’s entanglement with ableist, colonial cis/hetero/patriarchy. Artistic inquiry as a CDS methodology moves beyond disability as an object of study and makes disability and access central to all aspects of its praxis. It centers disability in practice, concept, materiality, and form, redressing ableist systems through artistic inquiry. This article explores queer and trans approaches to artistic inquiry as examples of CDS methodology.
Recommended Citation
Lewis, Brandi. “Artistic Inquiry as a Critical Disability Studies Methodology: Interdisciplinarity by Queer, Trans, and Gender Non-Conforming Disabled Artists.” Visual Culture & Gender, vol. 21, Sept. 2026, pp. 32–46.