Rachel Ungerer

Here For All Of You
2022
Acrylic on canvas
28" x 22"
$985

Website: rachelungerer.com
California, USA

VO by McKerrin Kelly

ABOUT THE ART:

The work explores the intersection of queerness & disability & challenges the idea of disability as a burden to others. Access Intimacy, coined by Mia Mingus, is a feeling of someone understanding & anticipating another’s access needs, enabling a disabled person more agency in their life. In the face of discrimination disabled love is a radical act. By celebrating disabled sexuality, the work confronts how disabled people are desexualized & infantilized. We are beautiful & sensual as we are, in our unedited queer and disabled forms, accessibility needs & all.

STATEMENT:

Rachel Ungerer is a Bay Area queer disabled artist. She earned a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles with a focus on painting.  Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, Louisville KY, San Francisco, Mill Valley, Palo Alto, and Oakland. After developing a constant chronic pain condition that limits the use of both hands, Ungerer re-trained herself to paint by working with her disabled body.  She exaggerates human form and uses gestural brush strokes to capture fleeting feelings. By publicly identifying as someone with an invisible disability, Ungerer hopes to promote greater awareness and confront discriminatory social norms.

DESCRIPTION:

Here For All Of You
In “Here For All Of You” the figure on the left faces us; they have a full figure, bald head, round face, small eyes, a toothy grin, and hold a cane.  The figure on the right is seated in a wheelchair and has dark wavy hair flowing down their back. She wears a collar with an O ring and an earring glints in one ear. The figure on the right kisses the grinning figure’s cheek.  Both are painted in purple, blue and dark pink with highlights of silvery white on shoulders and forearms. The painting is executed with wide bold brush strokes.

-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.
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The Opulent Mobility license refers to the exhibit and its audio descriptions. Individual artworks are the property of the individual artists.