​Overview

‘Who is in the room? Who could be in the room? Who should be in the room? And how do we bring them in?’ 
(Sinéad Burke, 2019)

This study discusses how museums curate and represent disabled bodies, and how disabled people experience in museum exhibitions, to discuss appropriate narratives and representation of disabled people in fashion exhibition. Fashion exhibition is a powerful media in social and cultural discourses production, unlimited to fashion; whereas experience of disabled bodies, how one senses and being in the world, is a valuable field yet to be explore. This analysis aims to contribute to the concept of ‘crip aesthetic’ (Melkumova-Reynolds, forth coming), that subjective experience of disabled people are both complete and knowledgeable, and as an integral element in the discourse of fashion curation.

#1 How museum exhibition
​communicate ideas about bodies

Museum fashion exhibition holds the power to demonstrate and challenge concepts of fashionable body, disabled body, and the expansive understanding of the body. 

Narrative and time
Curatorial narrative of fashion exhibition, even of historical objects, speaks to audience in the contemporary context. The concept of body, disabled body and fashionable body are fluid in different contemporaries. The concept of fashion ideal in an object’ time might differ with the time it is exhibited in. Fashion gains a different temporality and a new significance when it enters a museum. When fashion enters the museum, it transforms into an object of cultural critique, confronting the contemporary with the zeitgeist it represents. Therefore, fashion in museum needs to be viewed and interpreted from the present.

Collection of garments and objects
Apart from displayed garments, the selection of displayed objects and objects of cultural production also contributes to the construction of curation narrative. Up to the 1960s, museums originally collected and display items from elitist society, then expanded to everyday wear and objects. Objects associated with disability were viewed as medial objects instead of fashion objects, and were not seen as objects with social and cultural significants, therefore was largely absent in museum collections and exhibitions.

Body representation 
Body representation plays a significant role in fashion curation and is executed in various forms. Museum and commercial mannequin are closely linked. The lack of disabled-bodied mannequin manufactured is resulted by a low demand in both sectors. Although disabled body is a wide and diverse spectrum, only limited representations are found in exhibitions. Moreover, only exhibitions with budget can afford to custom made disabled-bodied mannequins. 

The absent of collection and body representation of disabled people marginalises narrative of disability in the museum sector. The disabled community is rarely seen by the public in fashion exhibitions up until recently, and disabled people do not grow up seeing representation of themselves as fashionable in museum fashion exhibitions. 

‘For disabled people, it's any representation for anyone
​who feels like they are different than average in some way. 
It's super important to feel included and to feel you're seen and that you have value..’

(Wheelchair user, 2021)

#2 How disability is defined

15 percent of the global population is considered disabled. (World Health Organisation, 2020)
​
Disability is a historically constructed discourse and ‘an ideology of thinking about the body.’ (Davis, 1995:1) Disability is understood as a binary concept between non-disabled and disabled, an absolute category without a level or threshold. 

Normalcy defines disability, then re-justify normalcy
The concept of an average body was introduced in the 18th century, medical statistics are generated to promote state policy. This concept is then adopted by Marx and introduced the idea of an ‘average worker’, defined and evaluated by a body that performs standardised working tasks in standardised time. A hegemonic version of an ideal norm is created, which then defines what is deviant and disabled. A body hierarchy is created, dominated by the defined normative standard body; other identity traits, including body impairments, place bodies down in inferior order. An ableism mindset is then formed, when non-disabled individuals are considered as normal or superior. 

Disabled bodies are hidden in lifeworld of non-disabled people
Commodities and living environments are designed and regulated around non-disabled bodies, therefore further disabling bodies with impairment. Non-disabled people come to understand disability through two main modalities: function and appearance. The naturalised ‘norm’ has become the primary means to individualise people, and one come to understand oneself in this mode. Responses of non-disabled people ‘disable' people with impairments. 

Overview of Models of Disability

Apart from providing definitions of disabilities, models of disability provide explanations of responsibility attributions, elaborate received needs, and therefore formulates and implements policy. More importantly, models of disability shapes self-identity of disabled people and unpack causes of prejudice and discrimination. Here I provide an overview a selection of models:

Use of both Social and Identity Models help underpin and manifest this study: museum environments will be examined under the framework of the social model, where disability is potentially defined or constructed; whereas, disability is recognised as an embodied way of being in the world and a potential aesthetic source under the identity model when approaches experiences of participants with impairments. 

#3 Reimagining Disabilities

Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field based on the Social Model, emerged from the disability rights movement in 1970s. Crip theory is developed in a more recent direction of disability studies. The framework of crip theory rooted in Judith Butler’s (1990) concept of performativity in queer theory. Crip identity is emerged through a performative process when one interacts with the world daily. Crip is a set of embodied practices or performances, it refers not to disabled people, but ‘how some people do disability.’ (Peers and Eales, 2017) Crip identity is seen as a complete and legitimate way of being in the world, (Siebers, 2019) ‘that we all have bodies and minds with shifting abilities.’ (Kafer, 2013)

How disabled people experience and being in the world could enrich exhibition curations and experiences. For example, the language of touch by visually impaired visitors is no less educational than visual language in the museum space. 

#4 Rethinking Accessibility

‘People will tell you it's accessible, but that doesn't mean it's accessible for you specifically.’
(Wheelchair user, 2021) ​

Physical Experience

‘Display-wise I feel irritated when things are designed in a way that I can't necessarily read them, the plaques and things are too high, or they have a display case or a table and I can’t get close to them. A lot of the times they go like all the way to the floor, if I can't wheel under them and have a hard time seeing what's on display. With that, it's a design thing where you feel excluded from the exhibition.’ 
​
(Wheelchair user, 2021)
​

Social Experience

'I've been to a few exhibitions where the lifts will be behind a certain point. So you have to ask staff to take you in a lift […] I’ve had staff before refuse or question the use of it or be like, ‘Oh, you're only allowed to use it for x, y & z reasons’, which is slightly irritating. Because obviously, there's no way someone will look disabled. But as a stereotypical, I don't look disabled.’
​
(Walking aid user, 2021)

Emotional Experience

‘I guess they tend to think of disability as an overarching word, but everybody has a different experience. What happened to me wasn't super traumatic, but it still affect my life. I don't have this hard time talking about it, but somebody could have almost lost their life or lost somebody else in the process, has survived, still has had different issues with relationships because of their disabilities. There's so much attached to it.’
​
(Wheelchair user, 2021)

​#5 Rethinking Representation

‘Me with a disability or as my disability, or me as the other aspects of my person?’ (Wheelchair user, 2021)

Representation of me as a disabled person?
‘I don't think I've ever been to any fashion exhibition that has a representation of disability. I think in art exhibitions, you'll typically get representations of [mental disorder]. Well, at least To me, I've seen them in a few exhibitions before. But for actual physical disability, I don't think you tend to see as much.’

(Walking aid user, 2021)
​
Representation of me as a fashion lover?
‘I guess I feel that's the thing, it depends on how you look at it. People get so stuck on their disability and yeah, it does affect my everyday life, but I felt represented in what I'm like. ‘Oh look, this is totally something I would wear’ […] that this person was wearing that, and you feel connected and so you feel like your personality is represented, or your taste in clothing.‘ 

(Wheelchair user, 2021)

Representation of me as a disabled fashion lover?
‘If you're not seeing somebody with a disability every day as somebody who can be fashionable and have style of their own, or could be considered sexy, desirable [...] You're not going to see people with disabilities as part of the fashion community. You're just gonna assume that they are wearing what's comfortable or wearing what’s easy, [...] but they don’t.'
​
(Wheelchair user, 2021)
​​

Identity
‘But we're also still all very different, we all have different personalities, interests… my interest is not all in disability.’
​
(Wheelchair user, 2021)

Experience, relationship and practise of fashion
'So clothing, especially with people with disabilities, you interact with it differently. You still want to dress the same way you would have, your style is still the same, still a big fan of fringe and kimono, of embroidered things and bell-bottoms that are probably gonna drag on the floor. You want to wear a big fluffy skirt, [even] it gets in the way or it makes it difficult to move.’

(Wheelchair user, 2021)

'We're still fashionable.’
​
(Wheelchair user, 2021)

My name is Iris. I am a fashion researcher and textile artist. My works focus in identity and wellbeing, material and memory. 

I am currently expanding my research on fashion practise and disability. Please stay in touch if you wish to know more about my works, interested in collaborations or share your fashion stories with me.

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