CW: Some of the languaging that has been quoted from Böttner is no longer appropriate to describe the Disabled experience. I wanted to quote Lorenza directly though and not edit her words.
The other week I was in Brooklyn, NY as a part of a large road trip I took with my partner from Boston to Atlanta. It was a journey as any trip is, but so much was discovered especially thanks to an art exhibition I saw at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. I’ve mentioned this before but when I was in High School, I started to really create work about the syndrome I was born with and about my Disabilities. One of the themes from the get-go when I started to create work from my personal experiences was about how strangers would stare at me due to my facial disfigurement. When I first started talking to my now partner, last year, they briefly talked to me about the visual artist Lorenza Böttner, a visibly Disabled and Trans artist who made work from the mid seventies up until her death in 1994. I was completely unfamiliar with her and while they were telling me about her, I didn’t take too much time to investigate Lorenza’s work further.
When my partner and I were planning to go to New York City, I had tried to rack my brain around what museums I wanted to go to in the city. One of them was the Leslie-Lohman and when it was revealed that they had an exhibition on Böttner, we instantly decided to go see it together. That was really the last time I thought about it until the day we were supposed to see the exhibition. My dear friend, Graham joined us to see the show. I entered the show knowing really only that she was Disabled and Trans. I left the show being moved and more understood in ways I wasn’t anticipating.
As much as one of my intentions with my artwork is to help other’s feel less alone, I only really gathered resonance personally from more Queer artists than Disabled ones. I related more to Queer experiences expressed in art. I never really related to Frida Kahlo or Van Gogh or countless other Disabled artists in history that I had learned about when I was little. I feel like one of the few exceptions where art conveyed aspects of my Disabled experience was the Netflix show “Special” by Ryan O’Connell. I created and still create art about my experiences with Nager Syndrome. I would always draw characters with four fingers to feel less alone with the fact that I have four fingers. Art allows me to create worlds where I am understood. Art allows us to share universal stories and allows others to be deeply seen. I knew that my experience was universal but I never consumed art that hit me so deep in my heart to make me affirm more about who I am, to make me discover more about myself after being a viewer.
“In some way I am an exhibitionist and I like it. I benefit from it. But I was not always an exhibitionist, it came as a result of my handicap because: people stare at me whether I dress conservatively or very flamboyantly. But it is fun for me. I like to open people’s eyes and show them how stupid it is to hide behind a bourgeois facade,” Lorenza states in a documentary about her life.
The exhibition at the museum featured various self portraits, drawings, video pieces and journal entries from Lorenza. It was deeply intimate. There was a documentary playing about her in the space, for which we watched about the entire thing. After watching the documentary, things just felt familiar. Experiences were mirrored but communicated in different ways. I turned to see this drawing of a bunch of figures staring, that she had created.
I started to feel chills in my body. Here was an experience that I never seen portrayed before in visual art, an experience I have conveyed in my own unique ways. I started sitting, looking at this drawing asking myself, “what would it have been like for me to see this when I was a teenager?” I began to get a little emotional. One of the first times Böttner’s work was majorly recognized and displayed was in 2016 in Germany, long after her death. I graduated High School in 2009, so there was no real way of me knowing of her work and I had little access to LGBTQIA+ history at the time growing up in a small town in North Carolina. This began a discussion with my partner and Graham of just wondering why her work wasn’t properly shown or acknowledged. I think we knew the reasons why, but it was still unfathomable to me.
As we continued to move through the exhibit, I was stopped in my tracks by a self portrait that Lorenza drew. It was a sketch of her with wings. I was looking at the drawing with some deep familiarity. It dawned on me that it reminded me of a sketch of myself I drew when I was 16 years old. I started sobbing, a lot. I was then curious if I had record of the sketch with me so I looked at my phone and found the sketch in question. Böttner was creating art that referenced the Greek sculpture Venus de Milo. In my sketch, I was similarly referencing beauty standards portrayed in this sculpture but decided to remove my face because I knew from a young age that the face I had didn’t align with beauty standards being portrayed in art. She was reclaiming beauty standards as a Disabled Trans person. Seeing her do this, made me feel less alone. Not only less alone in my current self but also my teenage self. The question of “what would it have been like for me to see this when I was a teenager?” still sat in the pit of my heart. This question only made me cry more.
“Once I had a dream that I fell down from a tree. I sprained by back and somehow I grew a hunchback and I felt terribly unhappy. But after some time, gradually, feathers grew out of the hump, and after a while I had wings sprouting out of my hump which made me very happy. So I started to fly. All went well until the moment arrived where I had to meet other people. Suddenly I became aware, that having wings was something so abnormal that I had to hide them and I preferred to go about with a hump rather than show my wings because as soon as I would spread my wings, I would be locked in a cage and put on display as a freak,” says Lorenza in the documentary mentioned earlier.
Continuing to move through the exhibit, I slowly tried to collect myself the best way I could. It was affirming to me seeing these pieces and listening to Lorenza’s words. So many feelings that I had felt but had no words for, were suddenly expressed in ways that I could articulate. I was so thankful to have the support of some loved ones to hold me and have deeper conversation with about this show. I didn’t necessarily feel sad that I just now discovered such resonant work to me and my experience even if it made me so emotional to view the exhibition, it was deeply confirming to me why I make the artwork I make and why it’s important for me to continue to share my experiences with others. I am so thankful for Lorenza making work about her experiences, for they are really helping me to cultivate greater understanding with who I am and who I’m becoming. It made me sad to know how hidden her work had been for many years before gaining proper recognition. It showed me the importance of preserving work.
It reminded me how we can all share experiences in different ways and how if one way somebody shares something doesn’t resonate, maybe another way it’s communicated can, by somebody else. There’s room at the table for various routes regarding how the same themes can be expressed because everybody ultimately digests things differently. That’s accessibility.
If you are making work about your experiences, in whatever form that looks like for you, please keep making that work and preserving it for others to see. You really never know when your work may one day deeply positively impact someone else.
thank u for sharing :) "Art allows me to create worlds where I am understood." is such a wonderful sentence. it reminds me of this interview with Ocean Vuong in Prac Crit:
"There’s a legend about a Chinese painter who was asked by the emperor to paint a landscape so pristine that the emperor can enter it. He didn’t do a good job, so the emperor was preparing to assassinate him. But because it was his painting, legend goes, he stepped inside and vanished, saving himself. I always loved that little allegory as an artist. Even when it is not enough for others, if it is enough for you, you can live inside it."