Outsider Histories, Insider Artists, Cross-Cultural Ensembles: Visiting with Disability Presences in Contemporary Art Environments

Disability is highly visible in contemporary performance festivals and art venues. Traveling from the disability performance ensemble work of Theater Hora and Jérôme Bel, to Javier Telléz’s installation Artaud’s Cave at dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, and on to the Australian Back to Back Theatre’s Ganesh versus the Third Reich at the Bodies of Work festival in Chicago raises the pressing questions: How and why is disability art and performance becoming so visible? And for whom?