Spurred by calls for disability justice and the desire for a more equitable and intersectional future, the disability arts movement is pushing forward with renewed political intention to disrupt conventional understandings of the arts.

Tangled Art + Disability and the AGO have formed a new partnership to showcase the possibilities of a world that honours access, disability and difference. We are excited to present videos by six artists from Tangled’s community that showcase their artistic practices in response to artwork in the AGO Collection.

Vanessa Dion Fletcher is a Lenape and Potawatomi neurodiverse Artist. Her family is from Eelūnaapèewii Lahkèewiitt (displaced from Lenapehoking) and European settlers. She employs porcupine quills, Wampum belts, and menstrual blood reveals the complexities of what defines a body physically and culturally. Reflecting on an indigenous feminist body with a neurodiverse mind Dion Fletcher creates art using composite media, primarily working in performance, textiles, video.

She graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with an MFA in performance and York University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She has exhibited across Canada and the US, at Art Mur Montreal, Eastern Edge Gallery Newfoundland, The Queer Arts Festival Vancouver, Satellite Art show Miami. Her work is in the Indigenous Art Centre, Joan Flasch Artist Book collection, Vtape, Seneca College, and the Archives of American Art. Vanessa is a 2020-2021 Jackman Humanities Institute fellow at the University of Toronto.

Closed captioning is available in this recording.

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Website: https://www.dionfletcher.com/

Instagram: @vdionf