ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to investigate some questions through interviews with successful professionals from the art field who have invisible or non-canonized disabilities. The traditional ideal of the human condition that promotes an ableist notion of agency and productivity along standardized norms has been severely shaken by disability studies. The interviews do not only deliver rich material for analyses on disability and genius as a pair of socially constructed opposites, but also for further discussions on the pros and cons of coming out versus passing for normal, of invisible disabilities, body-shaming, gender stereotypes in the art world, and social origins and effects of hierarchies within aesthetic value systems. With the image of the mask or the necessity of role playing being present in all of the interviews, the idea of self-empowerment through collective complaining as a contemporary form of theatrical catharsis makes for a perfect closing remark.