Cheryl Marie Wade

Nicknamed The Queen-Mother of Gnarly, Cheryl Marie Wade (1948–2013) built a body of work that blends poems, one-woman shows, and songs. Her practice emerged in women's discussion groups, before unfolding as performances in front of an increasingly large audience. Her performances were then distributed on VHS cassettes sold by mail order when her health no longer allowed her to go on stage.

Within a developing scene of disabled artists in Berkeley, California, in the late 1970s, she and others reappropriated the insult 'cripple' to form the word 'crip'.

Together, they detached disability from medical discourse to affirm it as a sensitive and shared experience of the world.

As part of a documentary for French television, director and disabled activist Diane Maroger met Cheryl Marie Wade, collected her poems, and made numerous trips back and forth to Berkeley in the early 2000s.

This work resulted in dozens of hours of film documenting the disabled community in California, before the project was abandoned by the producer due to a lack of broadcaster.

Twenty-five years later, this exhibition becomes an editing room to view the performances and interviews of Cheryl Marie Wade, whose work had until now remained on the fringes of the art world.

These images are put into relation with the works of contemporary artists who have direct or metaphorical links with the Berkeley crip scene.

The connections that form are as much drafts of possible films as they are reflections on what makes certain works accessible, or inaccessible, to us.