ABSTRACT
Many contemporary artists frequently conflate the uncanny with the freak, which most often summons images of disability, and their usage of the narrative prosthesis is prolific, which means the rendering of disabled corporeality is extraordinarily limited. This chapter explores an examination of artists, both disabled and non-disabled, who are making work that complicates the embodied and imagined experiences of the prosthesis by adding dynamic layers of meaning. Given that artists and art historians already understand the power of disability as “narrative prosthesis” in and of itself, it is time for the prosthesis to be re-fitted in contemporary art and made to support new forms of embodied and imaginary differences within complex embodiment as a critical methodology. Robert Gober captures the dual binary of the prosthesis as metaphor perfectly, moving in and out of fantasy/horror “seamlessly.” The prosthesis can become a shared, communal experience much like the objectives of a socially engaged art practice itself.
