Disability & Sexuality
Intimate Encounters: Disability and Sexuality highlights select photographs by Belinda Mason-Lovering from a larger exhibition by the same title, which has been featured throughout Australia and Europe. The Museum of Sex is delighted to be the first American institution to host this significant and aesthetically rich exhibition.
For Belinda Mason-Lovering it has been critical that everyone photographed has been a participant in the process. Mason-Lovering traveled around Australia over two years collecting images that reflect the personal emotional journey of people with disabilities by choosing to photograph the intangible – emotion. “The participants gave me such precious stories and trusted me to translate these thoughts and feelings carefully and tenderly onto images,” explained Mason-Lovering. “They exposed not only their bodies but also their souls by expressing their most intimate of emotions and thoughts. Our own reaction to the images exposes us to ourselves and our ability to listen when someone lays their naked soul in our path.”.
This is a radical departure from the tradition of photographing disability in which individuals are reduced to the subjects of the camera; an example of a disability, rather than a person with unique thoughts and experiences. To present one’s own voice, to choose how one is represented, is a life enriching and life changing experience.
Intimate Encounters debunks the myth that a person with a disability has no sexual identity or desire, an assumption that has led to the repression of discussion or expression of sexuality. This exhibition provides a forum in which the voices of people with disabilities can be heard; in which expressions of desire, need, love, affection can be seen.
Intimate Encounters: Disability and Sexuality will run through September 16, 2007.
Exhibition Credits
CURATORIAL
- Sarah Jacobs, Curator, Museum of Sex
- Elizabeth Mariko Murray, Assistant Curator
SPECIAL THANKS
- NYU Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
Advance or day-of-visit tickets may also be purchased or reserved without a service charge in the Museum Lobby. There is a $1.50-per-ticket service charge for tickets purchased online or by phone.