By Self_Saboteur
The project's goal is to create an anthology site that showcases the work of 12 disabled BIPOC exploring the topic of race and disability. Through music, visual arts and written art, we want to create a storytelling medium through a website that is both accessible and immersive. The official publication of the site will occur in April 2022.
The first phase of the project was to collect submissions from disabled BIPOC artists. We did a callout in July 2021 and received submissions from all over the world. The 12 artists were selected based on three themes: Vulnerability/honesty, diversity of perspectives and creativity. With the help of the Suffering the Silence, we made the official selection by September 2021.
As of October, each contributor has received $50 for their work and has signed a contract for publishing agreements.
The next stages of the project will be the web development, accessibility audit and finally publication. Depending on available funds the goal is to make a website from scratch, but if we don’t receive more funding, we will use some free website makers online.
Outreach
A dark purple background with white text that reads; “CALLING ALL DISABLED BIPOC, OPEN CALL FOR RACE & DISABILITY ZINE ANTHOLOGY, Honorarium provided.” With a minimalist image of a group of people in beige clothing holding up red flags and marching.
Website Plans
A sketch of the website, homepage. A light purple background with dark purple text that reads; “Race & Disability: A Digital Zine Anthology” with two dark purple silhouettes of people’s heads and shoulders. Red arrow with text reads; “when hovering over text, you get audio of said text.” “Menu” is written in white at the right hand corner. At the bottom centre a white arrow with text reads; “Scroll, to see more.”
Image 3: A sketch of the website, second page. A light purple background with dark purple text that reads; “How it saved my life by SAMIHA” above a rough sketch of a video thumbnail. Beside it is a bunch of lines with “Transcription” written above it. Underneath the lines is an audio clipping style image with “Audio Version” written under it.
Self_Saboteur (she/her) is a South Asian chronically-ill visual artist, who is heavily inspired by her heritage and disability. She lives with fibromyalgia, PTSD and other undiagnosed conditions. She creates romantic, art nouveau style digital and hand drawn illustrations inspired by Indian children’s artworks from the 70s-80s. Drawn in bright and vibrant colors, she hopes to share honesty and vulnerability in her work. Follow her journey on Instagram and Twitter