Cripping Aesthetics: The Work of Persimmon Blackbridge

Persimmon Blackbridge is a disabled, female artist whose multimedia work exhibits what I term “crip aesthetics.” In this chapter, I will describe “crip aesthetics” as visual and conceptual elements that constitute a style Blackbridge shares with other contemporary disabled artists, specifically in artworks that manifest a “crip” identity of the artists and/or of the subject depicted. My notion of “crip aesthetics” draws from theories surrounding the term “crip,” and more specifically, the use of this term to analyze visual culture (specifically in Carrie Sandahl (2003), Robert McRuer (2006), and Alison Kafer (2013), as well as from Tobin Siebers’s Disability Aesthetics (2010)). “Crip,” as a noun and a verb, has been developed by theorists who draw from queer theory and terminology. Like queer, crip escapes binary definitions of disabled/non-disabled and reclaims and empowers the derogatory term “cripple,” a one-dimensional epithet of disability, largely signifying misfortune and pity.