{"id":275860,"date":"2026-05-01T17:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/portfolio\/sharona-franklin\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T15:01:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T20:01:03","slug":"sharona-franklin","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/portfolios\/sharona-franklin\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharona Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sharona Franklin, an artist and a disability rights advocate, draws her raw material from personal experience with chronic degenerative disease in a hybrid practice that intersects with bio-art, crafts, and installation. Addressing the systemic ableism that normalizes bodies and runs through institutionalized medical practices, she reveals the resulting alienation of those who do not conform. With an interest in the tensions that arise between the body, nature, medicine, and technology, she focuses on health precepts, particularly those imposed on the marginalized, the disabled, and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making up her formal vocabulary is the use of organic and recycled materials\u200a\u2014\u200aintravenous tubes, medicinal plants, recycled fabric, expired medications, newspaper clippings\u200a\u2014\u200aencased in a hardened gelatinous material suggestive of flowers and insects preserved in amber. This poetic, hodgepodge cohabitation of materials, like devotional objects offered up for a reflection on the sacredness of ableist discourses, underscores the permeability of the otherwise hermetic boundaries between the medical and domestic realms. The exhibition Crip Sweet Home<\/em> (2024) thus establishes a rich dialogue between aesthetic systems that are opposed in every way: the sterile and aseptic world of Western medicine and the familiar, intimate, even baroque sphere of the home. This convergence is all the more poignant in Hellraiser<\/em> (2024), an installation in which a cradle is filled with medicine vials whose caps have been replaced by baby-bottle nipples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Franklin\u2019s work testifies to a medical economy that manufactures truths regarding the so-called able-bodied, an economy that denies agency to those who are nevertheless replete with it\u200a\u2014\u200apeople with disabilities, but also children. Far from proclaiming victimhood, she sheds light on the constant oscillation between the caring intentions of medicine (and of parenting) and the capacity of the disabled to act\u2014their resilience, autonomy, and vitality. Western medicine\u2019s well-meaning desire to heal the physical body at the expense of an attentive, holistic approach are juxtaposed with a certain religious dimension. Franklin proposes universes in which gentleness and vulnerability become forms of resistance, initiating an essential conversation about our own ableist projections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Ron Ross<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Small
Sharona Franklin<\/strong>
Wish You Well<\/em>, installation view, Museion, Bolzano, 2022.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Isabella Ritter Gallery, Paris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Seven
Sharona Franklin<\/strong>
Drosophilia Clock<\/em>, 2021.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Isabella Ritter Gallery, Paris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":275853,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"categories":[885],"numeros":[8014],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[1066],"artistes":[8054],"thematiques":[],"type_portfolio":[],"class_list":["post-275860","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-portfolio","numeros-117-crip","auteurs-anne-marie-dubois-en","artistes-sharona-franklin-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/275860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275860"},{"taxonomy":"type_portfolio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_portfolio?post=275860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}