#CripRitual

handwritten text saying #CripRitual

an exhibition of artworks curated by The Critical Design Lab (Jarah Moesch, Aimi Hamraie, Cassandra Hartblay) in collaboration with Tangled Art+Disability and the Doris McCarthy Gallery

Exhibition Dates:

January 21 – April 1, 2022

The show opens across two art galleries in the city of Toronto: Tangled Art + Disability, Toronto and the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough. You can also find #CripRitual online at CripRitual.com.

Join us for our remote/virtual public events

Works at Doris McCarthy Gallery by Khairani Barokka, Ezra Benus, Sky Cubacub, Aleksei Dymdymarchenko, Shannon Finnegan, Fran Flaherty, Stefana Fratila, Alex Haagaard, Danielle Hyde, Yo-Yo Lin, Leena Raudvee, RA Walden, Sara Prisma Williston

Works at Tangled Art + Disability by Cassidy Bankson, Faye Harnest, Earl LeBlanc and Dawn McLeod, Malcolm and Maria Corley, Margeaux Feldman, Maryam Hafizirad, Logan Quinn, Hanna Sheehan, Jessica Watkin

Rituals are transformative: they change us and the world around us, whether through incantation or ceremony, private practice or public protest. Academic theories of ritual hold that rituals are embedded in cultural worlds, and that all cultures have rituals of world-building. With the phrase “crip ritual,” this exhibition puts these theories in conversation with disability culture, as understood by disability justice movements and disability studies. Artworks in the exhibition use ritual to foreground understandings of disabled, crip, d/Deaf, Mad, and Sick people’s experiences. #CripRitual highlights strategies for building crip power: the ceremonies, habits, celebrations, design practices, social scripts, and community agreements, grounded in disabled knowledge and experience, that undergird disability culture.

We invite visitors to the exhibition — at two galleries and online — to consider what kinds of crip rituals are represented in these works and resonate in their own lives. In these works we find rituals of activism, rituals of care, rituals for managing the way that others perceive you, and rituals of joy and celebration. What’s your #CripRitual?

Remote /Virtual Tours

Both galleries are offering virtual tours of the exhibition, so you can engage with the works from the comfort of your own home. Tours will be over Zoom, and will be auto-captioned. ASL and audio description are available upon request.

Virtual tours of Tangled Art Gallery are offered Thursdays – Saturdays, appointments can be made through Tangled’s booking page.

Virtual tours of the Doris McCarthy Gallery are offered on Fridays, appointments can be made through DMG’s booking page.

About Critical Design Lab

The Critical Design Lab is a collective of disabled, crip, and neuroqueer maker-theorists and allies. Our lab creates public-facing projects rooted in a critical design practice informed by disability culture and science and technology studies. Other Critical Design Lab projects include Remote Access, and the Contra* Podcast. The lead curators for this exhibition are Jarah Moesch, Aimi Hamraie, and Cassandra Hartblay, in collaboration with our colleagues at Tangled Art+Disability and the Doris McCarthy Gallery.

More info: 

Doris McCarthy Gallery: https://dorismccarthygallery.utoronto.ca/exhibitions/cripritual

Tangled Art Gallery:  https://tangledarts.org/exhibits/cripritual

#CripRitual site: https://CripRitual.com

Critical Design Lab:   https://www.mapping-access.com/lab


This exhibition and its programming are supported by

  • the University of Toronto Scarborough,
  • Toronto Arts Council,
  • Ontario Arts Council,
  • Canada Council for the Arts,
  • TD Ready Commitment,
  • Bodies in Translation, and
  • Canadian Heritage Canada Arts Presentation Fund.