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Printmakers for Disability Justice

Curated by Brett Taylor

Eliza Lutz

About the Artist

Eliza Lutz (they/them) is a chronically ill and disabled artist from New Mexico, USA. Working primarily as a printmaker, illustrator, and fiber artist, their work explores the dissonance between one’s internal and external worlds, and the relationships between trauma, chronic illness, language, and time. They are currently a PhD student in linguistics at UNM researching how language shapes our perceptions of disability, a focus that directly impacts their creative practice.

Artist Statement

“Printmaking is a medium that works both in concert and in conflict with my experience of chronic illness. Both are tedious and require infinite patience. But printmaking’s laborious nature is also at odds with my body, exacerbating symptoms that make the repetition and precision of the discipline uniquely challenging. This friction directly informs my practice as I explore the in/visibility of chronic illness through both the process and content of my work. I incorporate embroidery as an expression of the body’s relationship with the built environment, connecting the places where internal experience and external perception meet.

These themes are explored in my ongoing monoprint series First Impressions, which reimagines the U.S. accessible parking placard to better encapsulate the fluidity of disability. By subverting the reductive, monolithic conceptions of disability this symbol has come to represent, each print aims to highlight the nuances of disability in/visibility and the spectrum of complex experiences that exists both between and within individuals and communities.”

 

Artist:

Eliza Lutz
A portrait of Eliza, a white person with long, wavy, red hair pulled to one side wearing a black T-shirt and smiling.

Social media: 

@matronstudio

Website: https://www.matronstudio.com/

Exhibition

Printmakers for Disability Justice

A print installation consisting of a grid of multicolored prints shaped like accessible disabled parking placards. Each print is unique and features a disabled figure in different positions, some with embossed mobility aids and colorful embroidery.

First Impressions: Installation IV
Installation of monoprints on paper with embossment and embroidery
10’ 9.5” x 5’ 4”
2023

A close up image of First Impressions, Installation IV showing a grid of multicolored prints shaped like accessible disabled parking placards.

First Impressions: Installation IV (detail)
Installation of monoprints on paper with embossment and embroidery
10’ 9.5” x 5’ 4”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a red figure standing up from an embossed chair with white threads from its woven seat reaching up to its face.

First Impressions: Placard #121
Monoprint etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a navy blue figure sewn together at the waist with an embossed walking stick crossing their body.

First Impressions: Placard #128
Monoprint photopolymer etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring overlapping, green and black standing figures with an embossed cane and green embroidery threads reaching from their eyes to the floor.

First Impressions: Placard #111
Monoprint etching and monotype with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring two overlapping purple figures with black twisting embroidery threads connecting their faces.

First Impressions: Placard #52
Monotype with embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a black figure sitting cross-legged next to an embossed pill container with a mess of black threads over its face.

First Impressions: Placard #55
Monoprint etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a blue figure standing up from under an embossed heart rate monitor. White threads connect the monitor’s numbers to a dark circle on the figure’s chest.

First Impressions: Placard #51
Monoprint etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring two overlapping red torsos, arms reaching upward with an embossed pill container to their side.

First Impressions: Placard #84
Monotype with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a green torso with a large black circle over their chest and hovering above an embossed walker.

First Impressions: Placard #48
Monoprint photopolymer etching and monotype with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring overlapping brown and white standing figures holding an embossed cane and embroidered with tan thread.

First Impressions: Placard #88
Monoprint etching with chine-collé, embossment, and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a blue figure sitting cross-legged below an embossed pill container with the letters “Rx” embroidered in white thread.

First Impressions: Placard #47
Monoprint etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a black and grey figure in the fetal position curled below an embossed IV bag. A tangle of white embroidery floss flows from the IV bag to wrap around the figure.

First Impressions: Placard #112
Monoprint photopolymer etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a spotted orange figure attempting to sit up overlapping an embossed seated figure. An embroidered orange rainbow connect their heads.

First Impressions: Placard #109
Monotype with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a green figure coming apart at the waist and stitched back together with green thread that extends from an embossed IV bag and stand.

First Impressions: Placard #93
Monotype etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023

A print shaped like an accessible-parking placard featuring a pink figure trying to get up off the ground overlapping with a standing embossed figure. Long pink vertical threads connect their faces.

First Impressions: Placard #49
Monotype etching with embossment and embroidery
9” x 3.5”
2023