The Western Gallery at Western Washington University highlights an exhibition of artists who confront social perceptions of disability — one step at a time
Updated March 17, 2025.
On Western Washington University’s South Campus, many students gravitate to Stadium Piece, an outdoor sculpture by American artist Bruce Nauman, to study, socialize or to simply take a break from classes.
For those with mobility challenges, scaling the Stadium Piece stairs could be daunting. But Joanna Pawlik, a performance artist from Krakow, Poland, wanted to dispel that notion with her ongoing performance work, “Schody,” which means stairs in Polish.
She performed “Stairs Piece” March 7 on Stadium Piece on the Communications Lawn at WWU. She walked up and down its stairs without prosthetics, while the audience watched and followed her to the top of the staircase.
“Nauman wants all people to interact with his sculpture,” Pawlik said. “ ‘Stairs Piece’ is about the relationship between me and Stadium Piece. I’m overcoming the obstacles of climbing the stairs.”
Pawlik, who had her right leg amputated when she was 10, said she had adapted her performance in “Schody” over the past decade to explore the potential and limitations of the human body suffering from disability. As a mixed media artist, she also works with painting, drawing, photography and video reflecting her personal experiences.
For “Stairs Piece,” she designed her costume with black and white materials, adorned with ruffles made out of paper. The costume’s color scheme reflected the popular outdoor sculpture, along with the juxtaposition of South Campus’s architecture — the Brutalist style of the Environmental Studies Building and the modern style of the Communications Facility and the Academic Instructional Center. Nature framed her performance with overcast skies and the Douglas fir trees of the Sehome Hill Arboretum.
“My costume design is visually connected to the sculpture and its outdoor surroundings,” she said. “And the energy of the audience, like making eye contact, made this a different artistic experience.”
A film documenting Pawlik’s performance of “Schody” at the Criocteka Gallery in Krakow from 2022 is currently on view at the Western Gallery.
“Talking about disability has always been taboo in Krakow,” Pawlik said. “I hope this will change in Poland.”
Accessibility accommodations
A sign with a blue background saying “Built and Maintained for Certain Bodies” stops visitors in their tracks, preventing them from entering the Western Gallery. They then need to make a detour to come into the gallery via an accessible entrance.
Built and Maintained for Certain Bodies is an artwork by Jillian Crochet, a disability artist and advocate based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hafthor Yngvason, curator and retired director of the Western Gallery, said he selected this work of art to greet visitors to underscore the inaccessibility of the gallery’s main entrance.
The exhibition Embodiment brings together works by a group of artists who confront social perceptions of disability in a variety of media including video, photograph, sound, sculpture, installations and performance, Yngvason said. The artists present the complexities of living in an environment that places obstacles in their way and explore in their artwork the structural forms of social oppression and objectification people with disabilities face.
“This exhibition has provided an occasion for the Western Gallery to develop its exhibition design approaches and make them more inclusive,” Yngvason said.
Curators usually design exhibitions for an able-bodied audience, so they hang paintings 57 to 60 inches from the floor to the middle of the painting to create a natural and comfortable viewing experience, Yngvason said.
“The average eye level of someone sitting in a wheelchair, however, ranges from 43 to 51 inches,” Yngvason said. “So why not hang paintings and monitors a little lower so everyone can enjoy them?”
Throughout the gallery, visitors can scan a QR code to hear an audio description about each artwork, while they can read printed information in braille, Yngvason said. There’s also more seating throughout the gallery to accommodate visitors, in addition to a library area with children’s books and academic literature about disabilities.
Many of the works in the exhibition present different ideas of accessibility and disability. But Zoë Fejeran, Western Gallery’s museum educator, said she wants audiences to contemplate the idea of care as they take in the works of art. They should ask themselves: what does care look like? How does care affect communities, and how should people build community through care?
“I selected works that give us an understanding of disability and how it goes far beyond having to use a wheelchair or a white cane,” Yngvason said. “Several of the artworks deal with healing, and I think that is beautiful.”
Caregiving, pain and healing
Three artists north of the border have several works on exhibit at the Western Gallery. While all three have roots in Canada, their experiences with the Canadian government’s treatment of their disabilities differ.
Sharona Franklin, a multidisciplinary disabled artist, writer, designer, consultant and advocate in Vancouver, said her artistic inspiration comes from how she navigates life while experiencing chronic pain.
“The government [in British Columbia] became my guardian,” Franklin said. “I often had to navigate a system where I was essentially requesting permission from one government entity — my social worker — to access another, whether it was medical specialists or something as basic as a bus ticket for treatment outside my region.” [Ed.: Bio updated.]
Franklin created the sculpture Wish You Well, currently on display in the middle of the exhibition at the Western Gallery, as a commentary on how the pressure of wellness culture impacts both disabled and nondisabled people through greenwashing and cultural norms of consumption.
The gelatin bricks encase different windows of biowaste, landfill waste, household objects and medical refuse, Franklin said. The gelatin bricks are not meant to judge modern-day medical care, but to represent a collection of ideas for the viewer to meditate on the cyclical nature of waste.
“I hope my work can contribute to a broader conversation about humanizing disability experiences, reducing alienation, and showing the importance of curiosity and humor,” Franklin said. “When I can, I choose to be more playful with my art, pushing back against the rigidity that once defined my childhood and how I survived disability into adulthood.”
Benefits of disability culture
Meanwhile, the Papalia brothers, artists from Vancouver, have worked together on a three-part documentary series “Impaired” to chronicle their journey as Antonio grows medicinal cannabis to help manage Carmen’s chronic pain from sickle cell disease. Antonio became Carmen’s designated caregiver cannabis grower through their Health Canada license in 2018.
“A part of this project is about the exposure of disability culture,” nonvisual artist Carmen Papalia said. He lives with a visual impairment. “These spaces are precious disability cultural spaces — places where people can live on their own terms and get support to live the kinds of lives that they want to.”
The videos, along with Antonio’s photography of cannabis buds in different stages of growth, are a part of the Embodiment exhibition. “These themes of compassion, interdependence and mutual support that we have for each other are in the Western Gallery,” Carmen Papalia said.
Antonio Papalia, a macro photographer and civil engineer by training, said his engineering background gave him a different perspective about the learning process of growing cannabis as medicine.
“I knew nothing about cannabis beforehand,” Antonio Papalia said. “I studied it to build a perpetual cycle, grow room and to automate things for accessibility reasons. That in itself is art.”
The Papalia brothers’ long-term goal for the “Impaired” project is to develop a variety of cannabis strains to activate Carmen’s visual hallucinations. Both Papalia brothers have Charles Bonnet syndrome, a condition that causes people with vision loss to experience visual hallucinations.
“It’s an experience that I particularly enjoy and varieties of cannabis affect it differently,” Carmen Papalia said. “We are growing hallucinogenic cannabis to test on me and some others with vision loss.”
The “Impaired” series also shows the possibilities of disability culture, Carmen Papalia said.
“It might be a better way to live,” he said. “People come together in crisis to help each other. We have developed practices over the years to survive in unsupportive environments — like the medical industrial complex, in cities that aren’t accessible, and in workplaces that are unsupportive and harmful. When you can find your own community and your own people, then you can start to live a full life.”
Learning outside the classroom
The Western Gallery is part of an educational institution, Yngvason said. WWU’s 15,000 students are not only preparing for jobs after graduation, but to understand the world a little better.
“Its mission has for the last 10 years been to participate in the university’s general educational effort,” Yngvason said. “This is where Embodiment comes in — it’s not just for students to consider the realities represented in the work, but to think about the art. I hope the exhibition challenges them and opens up a new understanding about experimental contemporary art.”
WWU students, along with the Bellingham and Whatcom County community, can view Embodiment at the Western Gallery, for free, through March 22.
— Story and photos by Catherine Skrzypinski
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Invictus Games: a celebration of inclusivity in sports,” Feb. 25, 2025
• “Disability Pride: embracing identity, breaking down barriers,” July 31, 2024
• “Removing the barriers for people with disabilities,” April 3, 2024