• MOLT, WITH SCURS
• about
• images
• opening reception
• Davidson site
• panel video
• Davidson emailer

• 
• 
• 

Molt, with Scurs, 2009
installation with found mattress pads, chairs, shoes, ink, altered wood walking canes, and light

Scurs are incompletely developed horns which are generally loose and movable beneath the skin, not attached to the skull. They range in size from small scab-like growths to occasionally almost as large as horns.

Molt, with Scurs was part of Re/Formations: Disability, Women and Sculpture, an invitational group exhibition at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina (Jan. 16 – Feb. 27, 2009) and the National Institute of Art & Disabilities in Richmond, California (March 30 – May 11, 2009). Co-curated by Jessica Cooley and Ann M. Fox, Ph.D.

Re/Formations featured artists: Rebecca Horn, Nancy Fried, Harriet Sanderson, Judith Scott, and Laura Splan.

The Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College present the first exhibition to address the intersection between disability identity and female identity in RE/FORMATIONS: Disability, Women, and Sculpture. Five female artists, four of whom are disabled, exhibit sculpture that examines disability not as mental or physical insufficiency limited to a small minority, but as a widespread and diffuse cultural identity, like race or sexual orientation. This is not art as therapy or rehabilitation. It is art emerging from within disability culture that is at once activist and aesthetically innovative.

— from the Van Every/Smith Gallery description

The competing actualities of the private and public lives of a person in society are magnified during disability. The public self, especially the feminist public self attempting to actualize independence through meaningful work and other rights of citizenship, butts up against the need to maintain a predictable and respectful privacy in personal matters such as grooming, eating and resting. The conflict creates havoc in forming a self-image of assertiveness when at the same time one is dependent on partners, caregivers or medications, all of which can be frustratingly unpredictable. This conflict is especially apparent in persons with invisible disabilities, since there is virtually no clue that suggests special needs to others.

— Harriet Sanderson, 2009