Within their creative practice, New York City-based artist Finnegan Shannon examines sites of gathering, considering how sharing space has the potential to nourish the collective, stir discomfort, or cultivate access intimacy, a term coined by disability justice activist Mia Mingus to give language to “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs.”*

While the group exhibition Don’t mind if I do provides a physical structure around which to gather, Shannon’s solo show i wish gays hung out at places where we can sit down mines archival and found texts that offer suggestions about how to gather. Featuring new drawings, paintings, and a seating intervention that imagines wheelchairs for loan on the dance floor, this exhibition explores queer themes in pain relief, access statements, and Wikipedia edits.

*Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link,” Leaving Evidence, May 5, 2011.

ABOUT

Finnegan Shannon is an artist experimenting with forms of access. Some of their recent work includes Alt Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces; and Don’t mind if I do, a conveyor-belt-centered exhibition that prioritizes rest and play. Their work has been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, an Eyebeam fellowship, a Disability Futures Fellowship, a United States Artists Fellowship, and grants from Art Matters Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Disability Visibility Project.

Finnegan Shannon

Support for i wish gays hung out at places where we can sit down is provided by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the School of Art & Art History, the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts, and the University of Illinois Chicago.