opulent-mobility-emily-tironi

Emily Tironi

Collage on a purple, blue, and hot pink book cover with white text reading Handling the Handicapped and pictures of hands and a large arm cradling a black and white photo of a person lying down.

Handled
2023
Collage on book cover with foam tape
8” x 5.8”
Not for sale- from the collection of Professor Van Dam

Website: emilytironi.wixsite.com
New York, USA

ARTIST INTERVIEW with ASL interpretation:

ABOUT THE ART AND ARTIST:

“I am a mixed media collage artist with a disability. I often like to focus on disability in my work through a societal and cultural lens. Collage, as the art of putting materials and images together to create a new and different whole, is a fitting medium for this subject. I collect images relating to a specific topic from a variety of sources and then add and layer them into a composition, often adding color throughout the process with gel sticks and other mediums. I combine bold, bright colors with graphic images to immerse the viewer in my concept and give them something new to see. By doing this, I hope to challenge societal norms and stereotypes.”

BIO:

Emily grew up in Cambridge, NY with her parents and two sisters. Born with a physical disability, Emily is familiar with the stigma, barriers, and discrimination that the disability community faces in their daily lives. As she grew up, she learned to appreciate her disabled identity and became a self-advocate. Emily majored in Media Arts at SUNY Adirondack, learning graphic design skills. Wanting to learn more about disability advocacy and history, Emily went on to earn her Bachelor’s in disability studies from The CUNY School of Professional Studies. During her studies, she interned at AIM Services, a disability service organization, in media and marketing and was able to interview and write about fellow people with disabilities. In 2019, she began creating and showing her collages that celebrate people with disabilities. In 2020, Emily had her first solo show. She participated in many disability related group shows and was able to connect with many fellow artists with disabilities. She wanted to connect with the disability community further and use her creative skills for disability advocacy, which led her to work at RespectAbility in 2022- 23.

DESCRIPTION:

Handled
Arms and hands adorn a book cover. The cover has a royal blue background with a title in white: Handling the Handicapped. Below a subtitle in turquoise: A guide to the li…and movement of disabled people. Below in white: The Chartered Society … o therapy. Partially obscuring the subtitle and publisher is a pale hand and forearm. Around the wrist is a delicate bracelet. The lower two-thirds of the cover are four squares that are turquoise blue and hot pink. The upper left one has a figure leaning over a seated figure. Covering the other squares is a large arm with long fingernails. Resting along the forearm is an elderly figure in black and white. In the lower right is a hand and wrist with gold ring on the middle finger.

-art description by Teri Grossman

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Pamela Schaff (Medical Education, Family Medicine, and Pediatrics), Julie Van Dam (French and Italian), Erika Wright (Medical Education and English), Sabrina Derrington (Pediatrics), and Ron Ben-Ari (Internal Medicine and Medical Education). Co-sponsored by the Keck School of Medicine’s HEAL (Humanities, Ethics, Art, and Law) Program and the Center for Bioethics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.