This exhibition is a series of portraits of people living with spina bifida.
An educational resource guide for this exhibition is available for faculty to downloand and use on our website.This resource covers the key themes of the exhibition content and provides dicussion points for gallery and in class sessions. To book a gallery led session with your class during the exhibition please email galleries@humber.ca.
Website: humbergalleries.ca/exhibitions/l-space/spina-bifida-front-back
Steve Kean has spina bifida. He is a disabled artist. For the first time in his artistic practice, he is examining how people like him who live with this condition, view themselves and seek to claim their power and beauty.
Body image remains a relevant topic in many different contexts. “Front to Back” focuses on the context of disability. Spina bifida often results in the necessity of using a wheelchair. People look down on those with spina bifida, literally and figuratively. They have historically suffered great indignity, even for the sake of medical education. Being the subject of treatment and learning is an experience many of those with spina bifida share.
“Front to Back” has been a true collaboration between Kean and those he photographs. It is a path to a sense of dignity and control over what happens to those with spina bifida. Audiences for the images in this project will see the people first. People whose lives have meaning and are beautiful.
Exhibiting this work in a public space was the final step and has given Kean and the participants whom he photographs a place and time to show spina bifida as a beautiful part of how they inhabit their bodies and shape their lives.
