Collection: ANTHROPO MA-1 Bomber Jackets
Title: Disability and Diversity (Graphic #2)
Role: Concept, Research, Design, Production
Description: ANTHROPO Graphic #2 = “Disability + Diversity,” uses population pyramids, world life expectancy rankings, and images of in vitro fertilization to examine our thoughts about what constitutes a good life within the context that 15% of the world’s population is disabled.
It asks us to consider:
• what physical, intellectual and psychological abilities make up the basic standard of health that deems a life to be worth living
• what are we saying about the types of lives that we’ve eradicated in routine health practices for expectant families, such as screening for downs syndrome
• how might reflecting on the reality that "the disability community is the only minority that we will all join at some point in our lives" influence our current actions
• how do advancements in medicine redefine the border between an able and disabled body, and how do these shifts influence how we think about what kinds of lives are worth living?
• how should we think about the ableist view that it is impossible for people with disabilities to ever live a life equally worthy of living as an able-bodied person can? In the words of the late disability rights activist Stella Young, are disabled people relegated to be “inspiration porn”?
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ANTHROPO is an ongoing series of original graphics for MA-1 bomber jackets featuring visual essays that transform geo and bio political information, data visualizations and scientific images into wearable statements that question the quantification of biological life in making qualitative assessments about the state of our survival.
ANTHROPO is an action towards restoring the bomber jacket and the appropriation of military dress in popular culture to its position as a historically significant icon of social unrest.
Every bomber’s graphics are generally organized according to the same logic - where the outside is the visual experience; the interior is the legend that assists the viewer in navigating the elements of the exterior, with links to additional resources; and the pockets are where you’ll find the ‘difficult thoughts’ - the uncomfortable, often unresolvable questions about the issue the bomber explores.
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Images: (1) kids version, (2) pregnant mannequin, (3) jacket interior; (4) isolated data diagrams > Black and White images of IVF, first and last portions of life expectancy ranking; legend for reading population pyramids and collections of population pyramids for Barbados, Qatar, Rwanda, Azerbaijan and China for the years 1950, 1990, 2016 and 2050; (5) ‘difficult thoughts’ pocket graphics, (6) exhibition scene and guide cover, (7) exhibition panels that pertain to ‘Disability + Diversity’ graphic, (8) elements of jacket, (9) detail of world population by billions panel interspersed with timeline that includes significant dates related to civil rights or milestones in birth related technologies such as birth control pills or IVF (in-vitro-fertilization).