ABSTRACT
Artist communicates community identity, which the community already knows about itself, to an art audience that may or may not be aware of said community. This chapter focuses on socially engaged artwork by interpreting socially engaged works and methodologies through a disability studies lens, specifically through the lens of post-traumatic stress disorder. Fiamma Montezemolo’s Echo is a performative investigation of the aftereffects of rupture that invokes the psychological reality of post-traumatic stress disorder as a poetic point of departure. Considering post-traumatic stress poetics in the context of social life and socially engaged artmaking requires a radical reorientation that affects form, temporality, criticism, pedagogy, and institutional support. The work of Brooklyn-based Harriet’s Apothecary posits socially engaged artwork as a methodology of healing trauma rather than the source of trauma for the participants. Harriet’s Apothecary promotes deep listening coupled with a rejection of blanket diagnoses or prescriptions for healing.
