Holey Wholly Holy: Visualizing Jewish Disability Justice

HOLEY WHOLLY HOLY: VISUALIZING JEWISH DISABILITY JUSTICE
By Sharoni Sibony

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
B’tzelem Elohim: we’re all created in God’s image. Whatever shape we’re in, we’re all simultaneously messy and gloriously whole and dignified. How can visual imagery help us envision a more just, inclusive world for people of all abilities? Through her art practice, Sharoni Sibony has been exploring how we embody our spiritual lives, how chronic illness affects our relationship to community and belonging, and how Jewish spaces can be more spiritually centering places of recursive healing and interdependence. This exhibition features a series of images that she created for the JCC Association of North America’s Eight Guiding Principles on Inclusion.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sharoni Sibony is an educator, artist, creative facilitator, and community organizer. She has been a lecturer, tour guide, pottery instructor, and book club facilitator in various venues across the Toronto community and has worked and volunteered in Jewish adult educational programming and event management through organizations that include Kolel at the Prosserman JCC, the Miles Nadal JCC, Ashkenaz Festival, Holy Blossom Temple, and Limmud Toronto.

An Intersections exhibit generously supported by UJA’s Kultura Collective in honour of Jewish Disabilities Awareness and Inclusion Month.

Jan 29 – Feb 26, 2025
Reception Tuesday, February 4
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

ABOUT ACCESS TO ART WORKSHOPS

A low-vision artist paints what he sees up close, and the curators call it abstract art — but for him it’s realism. A low-hearing poet mishears words and deliberately turns the mistranslation into a playful and surreal poem, creating new meanings. A teen traces the shape of their fidget spinners in overlapping patterns and creates new imagery in a painting. How can we use our fidget toys, our pain management tools, our canes, prosthetics, mishearings, moods, and the other experiences we have as folks with disabilities and chronic illness to create new imagery and insight? How can our access needs be built into our creative work? How can our creative process be an opportunity for relationship-building?

For four Sundays in February —  Jewish Disability Access & Inclusion Month — our artist-in-residence, Sharoni Sibony, will guide a process of daydreaming and creative tangents that will recenter our disability/illness tools, practices, and access needs as creative generators. Each week, we’ll look at some inspiring examples by artists with disabilities and we’ll explore how our own access needs can show up in our work, using each of our unique experiences to create side-by-side.  Each workshop will allow us to build community, be creative, and play with many different art-making materials and ideas. The sessions will be flexible to allow everybody to participate by writing, mark making, or creating in whatever way feels comfortable. In the fourth workshop, we’ll make a collaborative piece of art that will hang in the Jacobs Lounge Gallery as part of Sharoni’s exhibition.

Each workshop is stand alone, so you can come for one or more. Allies are also welcome, and we’ll have plenty of tools, toys, and resources to share. A wide range of art materials will be provided for painting, drawing, and collage, but if you have chemical sensitivities, please let us know.

Feb 2 – Crip Joy & Laughter: Celebrating Disability in our Art
Feb 9 – Crip Caregiving and Caretaking: Crafting Puppets to Express our Access Needs
Feb 16 – Crip Ritual & Wisdom: Bedazzling Disability Aides and Tools (you can bring your aides to decorate, or you can make art without them)
Feb 23 – Crip Community & Celebration: A Collaborative Mixed-Media

*”Crip” is a word that has historically been used as a slur against disabled people, that some folks have reclaimed as a word identifying disability community and pride. When we use this word, we are including anybody who experiences physical, mental, sensory, or other forms of disability, or barriers to accessing programming.