Community Healing: “Making and Mending” – Conversation about Art and Disability

Join us for a moderated community conversation exploring how artists of South Asia and the diaspora navigate careers at the intersection of art and disability. This event invites participants into a community-building experience that highlights the resilience of artists with disabilities working in creative fields that are often not designed with accessibility in mind. Together, we will engage in critical reflection and discuss how humanities-based institutions can lead the way in fostering more inclusive and accessible spaces.

The conversation will be moderated by Anand Venkatkrishnan, an intellectual historian of South Asian religion and author of Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhāgavata Purāṇa in Indian Intellectual History.

Featured speakers include:

Pooja Pittie, a Chicago-based visual artist living with a progressive form of muscular dystrophy, whose work explores the tension between a slowing body and an active, curious mind.

Grishma Shah, a self-taught painter and public health professional whose experience with a physical disability inspires her art and advocacy for disability as a valued identity.

Priya Rama, an Ohio-based artist who channels chronic migraines into vivid, expressive work, encouraging creativity as a response to chronic pain and stress.

ASL interpretation and online participation options will be available. Please register to receive a zoom link morning of the event. Mask-wearing is strongly encouraged in person.

This program is supported by a Healing IL grant from the Field Foundation and Illinois Humanities.