{"id":275791,"date":"2026-05-01T19:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/habitus-du-corps-handicape\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T10:09:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T15:09:42","slug":"disabled-habitus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/disabled-habitus\/","title":{"rendered":"Disabled Habitus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This experience (somewhat conveniently, for writing this piece) crystallized the parallels I see between disabled life and creative practice. These parallels often centre on tension, compromise, and contradiction. As an amputee with access to prosthetic technology, I navigate a constant push and pull: critiquing technology while relying on it daily, appreciating the access I have in Canada while wishing for more advanced options, and feeling complicit in systemic inequities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve learned that, as an amputee who uses a prosthetic device, I am often treated as having a socially acceptable form of disability. Because it is visible, people do not question it. My leg is identified as a symbol of technological progress, as if it \u201csolves\u201d my \u201cproblem\u201d body. This oversimplified notion of the \u201camputee cyborg\u201d becomes a misleading entry point for a public understanding of disability. Society often focuses on this individualistic, cure-focused vision rather than on lived experiences or the systemic inequities that can create further barriers and impairments. For context, as a minor, I narrowly qualified for The War Amps\u2019 Child Amputee (CHAMP) Program, which provided me access to hydraulic knees. Without the CHAMP Program, I would have been given the most basic prosthetic limb because I lost my leg to cancer and my parents did not have private health insurance. Access to prosthetic care in Canada is contingent on how one loses a limb. Factors include whether limb loss occurred through a workplace accident, the timing of the illness or injury, and the obstacles of bureaucratic systems that determine what is covered by private insurers versus public health plans. Access also varies significantly depending on where one lives, based on provincial health care policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"In
Emery Vanderburgh<\/strong>
Disabled Habitus<\/em>, exhibition view, McClure Gallery, Montr\u00e9al, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n


This reality stands in stark contrast to palatable public narratives of prosthetic \u201cadvancement,\u201d highlighted by the Paralympics and media images of high-performance amputees. Here, disabled bodies are often portrayed through \u201cinspiration porn,\u201d which fetishizes assistive devices as cures or as tools that propel us toward imagined transhumanist futures.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - \u201cInspiration porn\u201d refers to the portrayal of disabled people as sources of inspiration for non-disabled audiences, solely because of the conditions or circumstances of their lives. See, for example, Stella Young, \u201cI\u2019m Not Your Inspiration, Thank You Very Much,\u201d filmed April 2014, TEDxSydney, TED video<\/em>, 9:02, accessible online.<\/span> \u201cImagined,\u201d because in reality, global rates of amputation and disablement inequity are much higher, and local access remains uneven, even within systems that claim universality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

This flattening replaces complexity with spectacle, transforming disability into a visual shorthand for technological triumph rather than a lived condition shaped by factors such as infrastructure, policy, and care.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Living with these contradictions seems inherent to the disabled experience\u200a\u2014\u200awhich is why paradox forms the conceptual thread running through my work. The projects Floral Fasciation <\/em>(2025) and The Disabled Body in Motion <\/em>(2023) both rely on irony to convey their message by deliberately oscillating between reappropriation and spectacle. Each project is composed of multiple elements that together form a broader ecosystem rather than a single, resolved object. The works risks failure by design. It operates in uncomfortable territory: where representation can slip into voyeurism, categorization can echo histories of control, and analogy can verge on projection. These risks are not incidental. They mirror the paradoxes embedded in disabled culture itself, in which visibility and exposure, care and surveillance, autonomy and dependence exist in constant tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"On
Emery Vanderburgh<\/strong>
Fasciation Renders<\/em>, videos stills, 2024.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"On<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In Floral Fasciation<\/em>, I explore non-human disability through mutated flowers. These specimens include conjoined blooms, crested stems, elongated centres, and subtler mutations such as clustered petals. The large-scale prints echo William Morris (1834\u20131896) wallpaper patterns, but instead of presenting nature as sublime, they feature what might be called \u201cnature\u2019s mistakes,\u201d highlighting irregular forms. Sculptures made of engraved acrylic and glass encase real mutant flowers, displayed on a wide lightbox table. Beneath these finished works lie imperfect shards, test pieces, and discarded fragments that are material evidence of failure, iteration, and adaptation. Here, disability appears as part of an ecological network in which variation and mutation function not as defects but as conditions of life. By focusing on botanical irregularity, I seek to de-exceptionalize difference, exposing the instability (and the biases) of such classifications by revealing how difference operates as a fundamental mechanism of biodiversity and evolution and how value judgments become attached to deviation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"A
Emery Vanderburgh<\/strong>
Amanda<\/em>, video still, from the series Still Life<\/em>, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

The Disabled Body in Motion <\/em>began as a video installation intended to subvert the aesthetics of scientific taxonomy and early motion studies, including those by Eadweard Muybridge (1830\u20131904) and \u00c9tienne-Jules Marey (1830\u20131904). I collaborated with four disabled and chronically ill performers, working with them to choreograph movement sequences based on how they navigate their bodies and conditions in daily life. The installation, composed of twelve animated choreographies, dissects, isolates, and archives the performers\u2019 movements, echoing the colonial visual language used throughout history to objectify and medicalize racialized and disabled bodies, when such bodies appear in documentation at all. Prints engraved on acrylic panels are accompanied by headphones, allowing viewers to physically feel the engraved movements while listening to the performers\u2019 recorded stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across two years of collaboration, each performer experienced physical deterioration. In her narration, Amanda Brown, my friend and collaborator, says, \u201cIt\u2019s okay to decay.\u201d That line encapsulates my practice and my hope for future disabled representation. Where many artists describe a destructive phase in their process, my work depends on it by acknowledging loss, change, and instability rather than attempting to overcome them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Together, the floral works and the animated choreographies ask a simple question: why is irregularity in plants met with fascination, while variance in human bodies is so often met with discomfort or erasure? One reason could be the lack of a historical record of disability outside its medical documentation. These works seek to re-historicize disability by appropriating archival methods that have served to marginalize, in an effort to create a new archive and therefore a new framework of understanding. Plants and people alike carry the cultural weight of how illness, incapacity, and chronic conditions have been moralized across history through colonialism, eugenics, and ableism. These systems shape which bodies and lives can be called \u201cnatural\u201d and are deemed worthy of care. As scholar Sami Schalk has written, disability offers the collective grounding to confront the social meanings of deviation.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Sami Schalk, Black Disability Politics <\/em>(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022), 11<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In collaboration with the artist and biomedical engineer Erik Pagan, I tackle the rejection and disgust responses that disability or mutation can elicit by creating interactive robotic flowers. As we built mechanisms that allowed the flowers to furl and unfurl, I relied more heavily on collaboration and my care network than anticipated. More than my body ever has, my prosthetic technology \u201cbetrayed\u201d me in the lead-up to exhibiting these works. I filed insurance claims for hydraulic knee joints as we were 3D printing attachments for hydraulic presses to make mutated flowers sprout tumors. Like my prosthetic, this technology was halting and demanded improvisation, much like biological processes, evolution, and living in a body that changes within a world not built to accommodate it. This reveals the critical role of new media and material experimentation in my practice: to examine tension and debility rather than resolve them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"A
Emery Vanderburgh<\/strong>
Emery<\/em>, video still, from the series Still Life<\/em>, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

After relying so heavily on the scrappiness and resourcefulness of my community to realize these exhibitions, I began Burden Collective,3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Emery Vanderburgh, \u201cBurden Collective,\u201d artist\u2019s website, February 20, 2026, accessible online.<\/span> an artist collective that focuses on building resources for artists, particularly those with severe physical impairments, who are often unable to access institutional support. The name is a deliberate acknowledgment of the cultural fear surrounding disability and all \u201cdifference,\u201d and the extra work that institutions often associate with it. Disabled artists are frequently framed as costly or complicated, even as we shoulder much of the labour required to make participation equitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By naming ourselves Burden Collective, we flip this narrative. Body-mind differences offer something far deeper than an opportunity for techno-utopian \u201cupgrading\u201d or cure. They are sites of friction\u200a\u2014\u200aand therefore creation\u200a\u2014\u200aof disabled knowledge. Innovation does not emerge from new materials alone (although experimentation in technology is often a natural vehicle for our messages). By centring disability as both a framework and a culture, we build care, solidarity, and accessibility from the ground up. The burden of being in a mode of survival becomes our collective practice. Creative ingenuity is not optional, but essential for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My prosthetic knee began breaking down this year, just as I was putting together my first two solo exhibitions in Montr\u00e9al. Eventually, it failed completely, leaving me housebound while I waited for funding approval for repairs. Initial plans were scrapped. Materials and processes changed. I developed something entirely unexpected.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":275784,"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":[8032],"artistes":[8100],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[319],"class_list":["post-275791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-117-crip","auteurs-emery-vanderburgh-en","artistes-emery-vanderburgh-en","type_post-principal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275791","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=275791"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275795,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275791\/revisions\/275795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275791"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=275791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}