Curvature

Curvature is a collaboration between poet Travis Lau and me. This project deliberately places photographic portraits alongside lyric poetry to explore the interconnections between scoliosis-related disability and queerness. These dyadic works seek to challenge the conventions of traditional portraiture and modeling, which tend to privilege certain able bodies deemed aesthetically beautiful. How do we represent a queer body in pain? How might that body have its own aesthetic or even resist visual and even textual representation? This project attempts to embody the late Tobin Siebers' commitment to a disability aesthetic that "refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body--and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty--as the sole determination of the aesthetic.