A 3 channel performance art piece on the visual manifestation of invisible disability and the lengths to which we go to keep the invisible invisible.

Selected clips from each video. Each video’s total length is approximately 28 minutes.

I labor to appear as though I do not have a disability, but signs slip through the cracks. Having been penalized growing up for “disrupting others,” people with certain invisible disabilities suffer through hiding them to avoid shame and othering, to avoid being noticed. This series of videos shows the masking of disability in this way. The first two videos show fidgeting as a creative, loud, playful, almost meditative experience: One that, if acceptable, would make sitting still more tolerable for someone with ADHD, for example. Because of the fear of disrupting others, one must instead suffer silently: Peeling off nail polish as a metaphor for mutilating the self. At least then you are only disrupting yourself.