{"id":275712,"date":"2026-05-01T19:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/disca-et-cuir-les-maillages-de-hac-vinent\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T07:30:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T12:30:38","slug":"hac-vinents-disca-and-cuir-meshes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/hac-vinents-disca-and-cuir-meshes\/","title":{"rendered":"Hac Vinent\u2019s Disca<\/em> and Cuir<\/em> Meshes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the intersection of all these forces, needs, and restrictions, and in contrast to Deaf artists who reject the categorization of Deaf people as disabled individuals, Vinent has developed a multimodal and experimental sculptural and video practice. With materials encompassing text, fabrics, plaster, and visual content taken from various media, they address bodies with functional diversity and respond to social essentialisms used for deploying or securing binary notions of gender and disability, and for legitimizing relations of inequality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the sculptural installation La pr\u00f3tesis que dirigi\u00f3 al \u00f3rgano contra s\u00ed mismo<\/em> (The prosthesis that turned the organ against itself<\/em>) (2020), Vinent addressed oralism and audism, both of which are grounded in the assumption that speech is the only valid form of communication and socialization. They also discussed their dependence on hearing aids and subtitles for communication from a personal point of view anchored in Deafhood, and in dialogue with crip theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"In
Hac Vinent<\/strong>
La pr\u00f3tesis que dirigi\u00f3 al \u00f3rgano contra s\u00ed mismo<\/em>, exhibition view, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2021.
Photo: Bego Sol\u00eds, courtesy of the artist & ADN Galeria, Barcelona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"A
Hac Vinent<\/strong>
La pr\u00f3tesis que dirigi\u00f3 al \u00f3rgano contra s\u00ed mismo<\/em>, exhibition view, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2021.
Photo: Bego Sol\u00eds, courtesy of the artist & ADN Galeria, Barcelona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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In La pr\u00f3tesis<\/em>, Vinent included numerous elements, made of plaster, ceramics, foam, resin, rubber, and latex, that evoke shapes of parts of the middle and inner ear (think of cochleae, semicircular canals, and eardrums), as well as hearing aids and surgical tools and tubes, beautifully blending haptic, organic, and medical aesthetics. Three screens combined digital images\u200a\u2014\u200aproduced for the video piece Hard Persistence<\/em> (2020)\u200a\u2014\u200ato further immerse the audience in the interior of the ear as it appears to be undergoing surgery. One screen also showed a talking head that reminded me of the face in Project Graham<\/em> (2016), Patricia Piccinini\u2019s sculpture made of silicone and human hair depicting what the human species would look like if it evolved to survive car crashes. Vinent\u2019s talking head, it seems to me, can be regarded as a critical caricature of the Darwinist logic that exerted much influence on medical and social approaches to Deafhood from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth, according to which natural sign languages were considered an inferior system of communication that did not suit the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. In fact, Darwin himself described Deaf hand sign and gestures as proper to the \u201cdeaf and dumb\u201d and \u201csavages.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Charles Darwin [1872], The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 61.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hac Vinent<\/strong>
Hard Persistence<\/em>, video installation, 2020.
Photo: La Col\u00b7lecci\u00f3 MACBA. Dip\u00f2sit de l\u2019Ajuntament de Barcelona, courtesy of the artist & ADN Galeria, Barcelona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The videos in La pr\u00f3tesis<\/em> strengthen Vinent\u2019s critical take on what they experienced as the imposition of technological devices that medically and culturally force people\u2019s \u201cevolution\u201d into audist standards and expectations, even if the prostheses don\u2019t allow them to meet those standards and may actually become an annoyance. Although Vinent\u2019s experience with prostheses, and understanding of the implications of their use, should not be generalized (as the experience of Deafhood is neither uniform nor static), it is shared by Deaf individuals experiencing profound hearing loss. Significantly, the installation\u2019s sounds, which included frequencies that Vinent can hear and unintelligible voices, resembled a poorly adjusted, noisy electronic sound system. Finally, Vinent reappropriated the subtitles and didascalies<\/em> (descriptions of ambient sounds) used in the film and television industries to translate images or transcribe noises. In La pr\u00f3tesis<\/em>, the subtitles and didascalies<\/em> are poetic and reflective. Disassociated from the pictures and sounds, they emphasize the difficulties of lip-reading and offer a fragmented auto-biographical narrative about having a cochlear prosthesis to communicate with in the audist and oralist world. The subtitles and didascalies<\/em> remind us that spoken language within the audist world, historically assumed as referential for natural communication, is profoundly limited when it comes to recognizing and nurturing the use of Deaf people\u2019s natural forms of communication. They also nurture other possible narratives, as well as meaningful affective and potentially emancipating connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Accident<\/em> (2024), an exhibition and a series of sculptural installations presented at Fundaci\u00f3 Joan Mir\u00f3 in Barcelona, Vinent continued to acknowledge the interdependence between organism and technology, exploring a possible way out of ableist understandings and practices of this interaction. For the exhibition, Vinent chose to work in the building\u2019s basement, and installed a wall at the end of a descending staircase, unexpectedly blocking the visitor\u2019s access to the exhibition. Signage at the blocked entrance guided people to use the elevator, where Vinent included braille information and a sound piece, intending to subvert the ocularcentric and ableist perspectives typically found in museum guides. At the top of the other descending staircase, access was barred by nylon straps bearing the label \u201cblocked access due to anti-ableist accident.\u201d They also proposed that the institution allow the emergency exit to serve as an entrance; unfortunately, the Fundaci\u00f3 Joan Mir\u00f3 only permitted this arrangement for the opening, forcing the artist to unblock the second set of stairs afterwards. As an ironic response, Vinent placed an LED sign at the entrance to the exhibition space, warning that Accident<\/em> was accessible only to disabled people. The sign preceded labels in the installations that asked visitors to reflect on their privileges, how many disabled people they share spaces with, and why. The labels also announced that the textiles in the exhibition, which had human-like shapes, were made by disabled people and should be enjoyed only by people with disabilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"In
Hac Vinent<\/strong>
Accident<\/em>, exhibition view, Fundaci\u00f3 Joan Mir\u00f3, Barcelona, 2024.
Photo: Roberto Ruiz, courtesy of the artist & ADN Galeria, Barcelona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Vinent notes that Accident<\/em> points to forms of normalization based on identifying disabled people as \u201caccident[s] for the system,\u201d as unwanted \u201cunexpected [events] that shouldn\u2019t have happened\u201d and \u201cdisrupt normalcy,\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Hac Vinent quoted in Ciuti, \u201centrevista,\u201d (author\u2019s translation).<\/span> as well as to the \u201caccidental\u201d and superficial character of the policies employed by cultural institutions to accommodate people with disabilities. Accident<\/em> also questions the current practices used by museums and galleries to address issues of accessibility and tokenism, and their lack of commitment to breaking from the rationales and policies that incapacitate certain bodies and restrict disabled people\u2019s access to and active participation in culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vinent\u2019s oeuvre reminds us that Deaf and disabled people are neither pre-social bodies nor objects of ableist discourses and practices that, in one way or another, have historically been grounded in exclusionary logics. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Deaf and disabled people are people with cultures\u200a\u2014\u200aclusters of shared values, languages, communication strategies, subversive uses of devices, and other elements that offer a sense of belonging to communities (in plural) distinct from the ableist and heteronormative worlds. Vinent\u2019s works, understood as multimodal sculptural installations in which visitors find themselves in worlds that parasitize ableist institutions and make the dynamics of ableism visible, also allow visitors to experience spaces of disability cultures\u200a\u2014\u200aor, better, disca<\/em> cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term disca<\/em>, derived from the Spanish discapacidad<\/em> (disability), re-signifies and subverts the ableist and oralist approaches and predispositions according to which disabled subjects are embodiments of asociality, sadness, pain, and unproductivity. Instead, disca<\/em>, whichresonates with the term d\u00edscola<\/em> (disobedient), invokes\u200a\u2014\u200ain Vinent\u2019s oeuvre, and especially in Accident<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200adisabled bodies as social and political actors fighting for social integration and emancipation. And in fact, upon entering Accident<\/em>, the public stepped into a world of disca<\/em> people\u2019s insubordinate joy and pleasure, experiencing disruptive political forces of dissenting subjectivities and emancipatory cultural performances of life, meaning, and desire. Partially reminiscent of La pr\u00f3tesis<\/em>\u2019s aesthetic, Accident<\/em> offered a more pronounced kinky sensibility, combining diverse materials, including human hair, foam, flesh-like and skin-like rubber, latex, and appealing textiles with partially human-like and organic shapes. Connected by nylon straps and metal chains that created a mesh across the exhibition space, the elements intermittently vibrated thanks to humming motors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"In
Hac Vinent<\/strong>
Accident<\/em>, exhibition view, Fundaci\u00f3 Joan Mir\u00f3, Barcelona, 2024.
Photo: Roberto Ruiz, courtesy of the artist & ADN Galeria, Barcelona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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One might describe the exhibition as a queer mesh of materials, objects, metaphorical gestures, and overlapping sounds and movements\u200a\u2014\u200a\u201cleaning, twisting, mimicking, withdrawing, attracting, aggressing, warping,\u201d to use the words of the feminist scholar and queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 8.<\/span>\u2014\u200aand of bondings that, like people\u2019s experiences of disability, are neither single nor carry monolithic meanings. Asa set of noisy assemblages of sensuality and disca<\/em> energy and the flow of desire, Accident<\/em> opened up a space of dignity by echoing disabled people\u2019s narratives and practices that challenge ableist preconceptions, and pointed instead to creative processes of undoing normative sexuality and the eroticization of different body parts, while remapping times, parts of the body, and objects of and for pleasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accident<\/em> resonates with the Brazilian artist H\u00e9lio Oiticica\u2019s creleisure<\/em>, an aesthetic revolution that departs from the commodification of space and time, merges creation and leisure, and encourages political engagement through synesthetic experience. Arguably, Vinent\u2019s range of representational strategies, materials, and sculptural practices reflects diverse socially and culturally embodied understandings of historical, intersectional, and current oppressions and expands the disca<\/em> aesthetic experience, without letting the works become tokenizable pieces of disca<\/em> experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vinent\u2019s low-tech unfolding of disca<\/em> and cuir<\/em> energy addresses intersectional joy, desire, leisure, and ableism in late capitalism from the Global South, which, considering the significant Latin American and African migration to Spain\u200a\u2014\u200aand the conservative reaction currently running across the Global North\u200a\u2014\u200aare also present in Barcelona and in Vinent\u2019s communities of belonging.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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It is worth noting that Vinent\u2019s use of the terms disca<\/em> and cuir<\/em> responds to the fact that, as the feminist and disability theorists Sami Schalk and Jina B. Kim have pointed out, Deaf, crip, and queer studies were born in the context of neoliberalism in the North, especially in the United States, and often show limited engagement with intersectional issues, including ethnicity and race.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Sami Schalk and Jina B. Kim, \u201cIntegrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies,\u201d Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society<\/em> 46, no. 1 (2020): 35.<\/span> The term cuir<\/em> denotes a deliberate defamiliarization of the term \u201cqueer\u201d and \u201cregisters the geopolitical inflection toward the South and from the peripheries as a counteroffensive to colonial epistemology.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Sayak Valencia,\u201cDel Queer al Cuir,\u201d ReCIA\u200a\u2014\u200aRevista del Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n en Artes <\/em>1 (2025): 13, (author\u2019s translation).<\/span> \u201cDisca <\/em>and cuir<\/em>\u201d therefore denotes, as Accident<\/em> does, a critical alliance\u200a\u2014\u200aor a \u201cband,\u201d as Vinent calls it\u200a\u2014\u200aof trans, lesbian, gay, crip, and racialized people and an exuberant \u201ckaleidoscopic multicultural mosaic, where violence and celebration coexist\u201d in a festive way.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Leche de Virgen Trimegisto, \u201cPornov\u00e1lidos y minusgr\u00e1ficos,\u201d Revista Vozal<\/em> 2 (2013): 5, (author\u2019s translation).<\/span> Disca<\/em> and cuir<\/em> names a critique from sexual, economic, productional, gender, and functionally diverse peripheries that develop politics of intersectional resistance, even if they parasitize the North and its cultural institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in this context that works such as La pr\u00f3tesis <\/em>and Accident<\/em> invite us to explore the interdependence of human and non-human devices and to question neoliberal and ableist systems that demand that Deaf and disabled persons assimilate with the aesthetic and functional temporalities of consumption and productibility. Accident<\/em> in particular asks us to give ourselves time and let sensations and thoughts emerge in a sensuous ambience, so we may also give ourselves, as the feminist, queer, and disability theorist Alison Kafer suggests, \u201cfutures that embrace disabled people, futures that imagine disability differently, futures that support multiple ways of being\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip<\/em> (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 45.<\/span>\u200a\u2014\u200afutures of critical diversity, plasticity, and expansion that articulate different ways of building social justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hac Vinent\u2019s work is much indebted to their experience as a Catalan and cuir<\/em> person who became deaf after a serious health problem when they were a baby. Due to their entourage\u2019s lack of knowledge about Deaf culture, as well as an absence of interpreters in the ableist-oralist world in 1990s Spain, Vinent did not learn sign language; they had to learn lip-reading and use \u201cnon-biological devices\u201d (their term for hearing aids and subtitles) to [NOTE count=1]communicate.[\/NOTE][REF count=1]Carolina Ciuti, \u201centrevista: Hac Vinent, artista anticapacitista, sondeando los l\u00edmites de lo sensorial,\u201d Exibart<\/em> (website), December 20, 2024, accessible online, (author\u2019s translation).[\/REF] They later ended their studies in sociology and moved into the\u00a0more manual and independent realm of fine arts.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":275687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[8014],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[8024],"artistes":[8104],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-275712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-117-crip","auteurs-juan-carlos-guerrero-hernandez-en","artistes-hac-vinent-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275712"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275720,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275712\/revisions\/275720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275712"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=275712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}