Joseph Grigely: Otherhow

The acclaimed Deaf artist and writer collects decades’ worth of material addressing issues of art and advocacy

American visual artist and scholar Joseph Grigely (born 1956) here brings together writings, lectures, interviews and documentation of his work spanning 40 years. Deaf since the age of 10, his art and writing have long questioned and made use of various modes of communication—photographs, handwritten notes, lipreading, newspaper headlines, paintings and TV captions—to examine and scrutinize the ableism embedded in cultural and media production.
Otherhow interrogates modes of access and analyzes how issues of accessibility and their resolution provide a benefit to everyone, not just the disabled. Chapters devoted to art, access and advocacy underpin the interconnected nature of these issues. Letters of complaint, faxes and emails, unpublished op-eds, exhibition proposals, statements on equality and access: each provides a glimpse into how Grigely’s work has been shaped by—or constructed from—the “tangled process” of opening access.
The book is rounded out by a series of visual inventories: collections of images that document failures of access or, in the case of the obituaries, highlight those who had a disability or were activists working to establish greater access for those with disabilities.