Narratives of the Flesh II: Embodied Grief

Amelia-Marie K. Altstadt is a PhD Candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a Pipeline to an Inclusive Faculty Fellow originally from San Diego, California (Kumeyaay land). Amelia-Marie is pursuing their degree under Dr. Carrie Sandahl in the Department of Disability and Human Development. She supports multiple projects with Bodies of Work at UIC. Their work focuses on disability culture and the arts, performance studies, media analysis of theatrical works, and playwriting.

In 2025, Amelia-Marie received the Gary Burns Graduate Travel Award from the Midwest Pop Culture Association and the Graduate Travel Award from the Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association for their scholarship on disability culture and works of theatre. In 2024, she received the Disability Visibility Fellowship for the Unexpected Shape Writing Academy and the 2022 recipient of the Association of College Personnel Administrators (ACPA) Coalition for Disability’s Disability Leadership Award.

Previously, as a student affairs professional in higher education in Nebraska, they served low-income, first-generation students primarily of Latinx, Black, and Indigenous backgrounds from both rural and urban settings. In a full-time role, she served Honors scholars primarily through advising, teaching, and organizing experiential learning opportunities. They, additionally, are a proud hermana of Sigma Omega Nu (ΣΩΝ) Latina Interest Sorority, Incorporated.

www.ameliamariewoo.com

Maggie Bridger is a sick and disabled dance & fiber artist, arts organizer, and scholar interested in reimagining pain through the creative process. Maggie is a 2022 & 2025 City of Chicago Individual Artist Program grantee. Her work has been shown at The Steppenwolf Theater Company’s LookOut Series, High Concept Labs, Elevate Chicago Dance, The Art Institute of Chicago, Cottey College, and CounterBalance, among others. Maggie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she is conducting archival and ethnographic research in service of her dissertation project, Dancing With/in Pain. Her writing has been published in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, Le Sociographe, The HowlRound and the Journal of Cultural and Literary Disability Studies. She is Membership & Conference Manager with the Dance Studies Association and serves on the organizing committee for the Chicago Dance Studies Working Group.

www.maggiebridger.com

Sydney Claire Bronson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago, with a wide variety of works spanning many mediums, under the name ZeDo, or Zero Dollar Gift Card (ZeDoGiCa). Its work explores themes of alienation, otherness, disability, urban living, queer use, and the boundaries between the mind and reality.

zedogica.neocities.org / @ZeDoGiCa

Cuerpos Colectivo is a disability-led artist collective reclaiming space through art, culture, and justice. We create community-centered projects that amplify disabled and multiply marginalized voices, challenge ableist narratives, and build belonging through collective creativity, collaboration, and care. Collective bios (each section of the piece is in order as our bios):

1. Zelene Sanchez (she/her) is an emerging multidisciplinary artist whose work explores disability, identity, advocacy, and self-expression. Working across acrylic, charcoal, analog collage, digital art, and fiber art, she creates as a way of processing and sharing her experiences as a disabled Brown woman and wheelchair user.
2. Gabriela (Gabi) Tahsuda (she/they) is a disabled mixed media artist who blends beadwork, drawing, and wearable art to explore how personal and cultural ways of being are kept alive through creative practice. Their work is grounded in disability, identity, survivance, and joy.
3. Mariela (they/them) works in higher education and is passionate about helping students explore their values and unique leadership styles. They are a danzante with Xochitl-Quetzal Danza Azteca, a member of the Mesa Santiago Apostol, a death doula, a fiber artist, a member of disability-led artist collective Cuerpos Colectivo, and is studying ancestral medicine under Cristina Puzio.
4. A.J. Jung (they/them/elle/ell@) is a many arrayed, nonbinary/trans multimedia artist, who sees art as alive, and existing beyond traditional boundaries. Their work explores resistance, disability, and existence.
5. Genevieve Ramos (she/her/ella) is a disabled artist whose work explores disability, identity, vulnerability, and resilience. Working primarily in acrylic, Genevieve uses expressive color to transform personal experiences into visual narratives that invite reflection, connection, and dialogue.
6. Amelia-Marie K. Altstadt (they/she) is a mixed, femme, queer, and disabled CODISA teaching artist, playwright, and PhD candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Their artistic and scholarly work draws on disability studies and performance studies to engage with disability arts and culture, theatre, and the cripistemological practices of CODISA. www.ameliamariewoo.com
7. Iliana Haven (they/them) is a disabled Latinx artist based in Chicago whose work explores art as a tool for advocacy and social change. Through their creative practice, Reclaym, they promote art as activism through ceramics and painting. Haven also serves as Housing Community Organizer at Access Living, advocating for affordable, accessible, and inclusive housing for people with disabilities.
8. A.J. Jung (they/them/elle/ell@) is a many arrayed, nonbinary/trans multimedia artist, who sees art as alive, and existing beyond traditional boundaries. Their work explores resistance, disability, and existence.

@cuerposcolectivo

Ralph Skunkie Davis is a transdisciplinary transsexual artist and educator whose sculptures act as liberatory tools, complicating the perception of marginalized bodies through biomimicry, prosthesis, and body modification. They often work with apocalypse in mind, acknowledging the ways in which the trans body, historically and discreetly, is a site of constant rebirth and reinvention. Ralph received their BFA in Sculpture from RISD in 2023. Their art has been featured by Pilotenkueche International Art Program (DE), GEDOK Kunst Symposium (DE), Dispatch Gallery (US), Living Room Gallery (US), Agitator Gallery (US), 6311 Arts (US), and Lillstreet Art Center (US), where they work in the metalsmithing department.

@ralphskunkiedavis / ralphskunkiedavis.com

Jalisa English is an individual who proudly identifies by she/her pronouns. She is also a disabled individual and chronic illness survivor. She loves to write, advocate, and speak. Her goal and passion in life is to be an author and entrepreneur. She also loves poetry. "Through my writing, I share stories of resilience, healing, faith, and self - discovery to encourage others to embrace their own journey."

Ladonna Freidheim, founder of ReinventAbility and DisFest, is passionate about inclusion, dance, science, and joy! An award-winning leader in the arts, disability inclusion specialist, and formally trained dancer; Ladonna grew up a bun-headed baby ballerina dancing around Chicago, mostly South-side. After a degenerative disability ended her ballerina life, she recovered from surgeries with future paralympic athletes who introduced her to disability culture. With the aid of braces and a cane or crutches she is able to navigate the world some of the time, but it is Ladonna’s wheelchair that has restored her dancers soul. A masters degree in occupational therapy contributes considerable expertise to her work adapting choreography and promoting inclusion. Ladonna was honored by the Mayor of Chicago and the City Council in July 2026, received a Leadership in Dance Award 2024, the Rhythm Within award 2023, and has been nominated for 3Arts Awards in both dance and education, among others. She has served on numerous Committees and Boards of Directors, currently with See Chicago Dance, and a working group of the Mayor’s Chicago Arts Committee.

www.reinventability.com

Gretchen is a storyteller working in comics, writing, murals, curation, installation and puppetry. She received her MFA in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She co-founded Chicago’s Agitator Artists’ Collective in 2017, and served as Director from 2023 - 2025. Her notable curation includes 2019’s Everything Has Changed: Life Altering Medical Experiences in 21st Century USA. Her 2020 book-based exhibition, And Then: Stories About What Happens Next, is an invited contribution to the collection Documenting Contemporary Social Life Shaped by the Covid-19 Pandemic and Racial Justice Movements, at the Field Museum in Chicago. She was Visual Gallery Curatorial Resident at Elastic Arts from 2021 - 2022. In 2024 she mounted Comics on the Radio, an accessible, live radio play interpretation of the fourth volume of Agitator Comics!, an annual compilation she has curated since 2021. In 2025, she co-curated Narratives of Flesh, mounted at The International Museum of Surgical Science, with fellow 3Arts awardee Genevieve Ramos.

In 2017, her design Resilience was chosen for Rogers Park’s Mile of Murals. Her other murals include Hazel and Zorro at the Logan Square Dog Park, an effort designed and coordinated by AnySquared Projects; Displacement, with Project Logan; Storytime at the Lifeline Theater; and Fix It Yourself at the Chicago Women in Trade training facility.

Gretchen has been awarded residencies at Buinho Fab Lab in Messejana, Portugal; Puppet Lab through the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival; Sundance Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee; Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida; Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in South Korea; and the Trinacria Performance Festival in Pezzolo, Sicily. She attended Lisbon’s DISQUIET International literary program in 2025 and 2026.

She is currently developing the Dinosaur Opera, a multi-chapter puppet saga exploring the deep past and deep future, and how we understand both in the present day. She premiered Chapter 1, The Thing with Wings, at the Chopin Theatre in 2023. Chapter Two, With Their Very Bones, premiered in 2024 at Aloft Circus Arts’ October Communion. Chapter Three, History and Time, debuted at the Beverly Arts Center in March 2025.

Gretchen received a 2021 3Arts Make A Wave grant; a 2022 VIDA: Women in Literary Arts Fellowship for Writing Residency at SAFTA in Knoxville; and a 2022 Esteemed Artist Grant from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She teaches art and writing at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.

gretchenhasse.com

Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer and curator who focuses on the socially challenged body. She is best known for representations of people whose physical embodiment, sexuality, or gender identity have long been stigmatized.

Ms. Lehrer’s work has been seen in venues including the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, Yale University, the United Nations, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, the Arnot Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Frye Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the State of Illinois Museum.

Awards include the 2017 3Arts MacDowell Fellowship for writing, 2015 3Arts Residency Fellowship at the University of Illinois; the 2014 Carnegie Mellon Fellowship at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges; the 2009 Prairie Fellowship at the Ragdale Foundation. Grants include the 2009 Critical Fierceness Grant, the 2008 3Arts Foundation Grant, and the 2006 Wynn Newhouse Award for Excellence, (NYC), as well as grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the University of Illinois, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her memoir, Golem Girl, will be published by the One World imprint of Penguin/Random House in October 2020. Ms. Lehrer is represented by Regal Hoffman & Associates literary agency, NYC.

Ms. Lehrer is on faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and instructor in the Medical Humanities Departments of Northwestern University.

www.rivalehrerart.com

Barbara Little, also known as Mothra Liddel, is a multidisciplinary artist, costume designer, seamstress, performer, arts organizer and curator based in Chicago, IL. As a professional costumer for film, tv, theme parks, and live events for over a decade, Mothra utilizes a myriad of skills in costume craft technology, fashion design, prop fabrication, and more to construct transformative wearable sculpture. On the stage, Mothra is also a burlesque performer, flow artist, and fire performer. Drawing on lived experience with chronic illness and disability, Mothra's work explores themes of pain and healing, otherness and acceptance, grief and redemption, magic and the eternal return. She finds inspiration in counter culture, domestic history and craft, pagan folklore, psychedelia, chaos magic and DIY resistance. She holds a BFA/AH from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Art & Expressive Therapies from Adler University. Mothra’s work has been featured at Agitator Gallery, the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Newport Theater, Arts in the Dark Parade, the Full Moon Jam, and dozens of film productions. When not brewing her next project, Mothra enjoys mycology, woodland foraging, jamming to weird music, and preaching the harm reduction gospel.

mothraliddel.neocities.org

Genevieve Ramos is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and cultural organizer. Her autobiographical practice explores transformation, care, connection, and belonging through vibrant painting, collage, and mixed media. She is a co-founder of Cuerpos Colectivo, a disability-led artist collective creating space for community, art, and cultural exchange.

www.genevieveramos.art

I was born and raised in a suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and moved to Chicago in 2015. I am a self-taught artist and poet who began drawing as early as I can remember, eventually discovering painting and writing as a teenager. I enjoy slow dancing, visiting museums, and talking too much. I am a Libra and have two cats named Sheriff and Howdy (am I secretly a cowgirl?).

www.allisoncarolschmocker.com

Grishma Shah is an entertainment psychologist and self-taught artist and founder of LaGrish Consulting. When Grishma Shah isn't consulting on shows/films or facilitating workshops, the self-taught artist is likely burning the midnight oil creating works of art for upcoming LaGrish events. Immersed in culture from her South Asian roots, Grishma's painting style goes beyond traditional elements, often incorporating elements of mixed media to invoke a multi sensory art experience.

A 2021 3Arts/Bodies Of Work Fellow, Grishma has had her artwork exhibited at Bridgeport Art Center, South Asian Institute, Harold Washington Library, Devonshire Cultural Center, Skokie Public Library, Schaumburg District Library, Adler University, Harper College, The Chicago Cultural Center, Navy Pier, Chicago Symphony Theatre, Wentz Concert Hall/Fine Arts Center (to name a few).

www.lagrish.com

Rachel Singer (she/her/hers) is a disabled multidisciplinary artist, teaching artist and occupational therapy assistant. In Rachel’s work in puppetry, sensory theater, devised theater, ritual, and dance, she explores the liminal places of barely tangible worlds where memory meets imagination. Her creative work often reflects her experience living with extreme muscle fatigue and energy fatigue due to myalgic encephalomyelitis from neuroinvasive West Nile virus. Living in a society that moves at an inhumane pace, Rachel envisions a culture that slows down to reclaim time. Ritual does not stop time, but it stops us in time. She invites her audience to slow down with her, and gather to remember, dream, create and connect.

As a certified occupational therapy assistant she works to integrate embodied creative practices and disability justice into occupational therapy practice. She teaches workshops at universities and museums, exploring topics such as disability justice, disability culture, occupational therapy, puppetry, sensory theater and devised theater. Since 2007, Rachel has been a teaching artist, teaching dance and puppetry in the Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, and community spaces. From 2022-2023, Rachel developed a show called Eve of a Great Remembering, in an 8 month puppet theater incubator and residency program called, The Chicago Puppet Lab. As a 3Arts/Bodies of Work Artist-in-Residence, in 2024, Rachel continued the development of Eve of a Great Remembering and created a workshop called Practitioners of Being and Becoming. As a part of this residency, she was given the opportunity to merge her work in puppetry, sensory theater, and dance, with her work in occupational therapy, disability culture, and disability justice. She continues to develop this work and is currently designing an arts incubator for disabled artists, teaching artists, and occupational therapy practitioners to collaborate and learn together.

@practiceofimagination

Bri Skeels is an interdisciplinary artist from Springfield Illinois who enjoys working in whatever medium they can get their hands on. Their current focuses are illustration, jewelry making, makeup art, fashion design, 3D design, photography, and ethical taxidermy. They try and capture a sense of dark whimsy in their work while also focusing on the nature around us. You can find more of their work at misplacedmemories.storenvy.com, on instagram @menagerie_m_memories, or on facebook @themenagerieofmisplacedmemories.

@menagerie_m_memories / @bug_witch / misplacedmemories.storenvy.com

Reveca is the founder of BACKBONES, a disability-led nonprofit supporting people with spinal cord injuries and disabilities, and former co-director of ReelAbilities Film Festival Chicago. She is the director and producer of the documentary While We Are Here (2026), which explores art, disability, ancestry, and creative legacy. Her work has been supported by 3Arts, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, Kartemquin Films, Ford Foundation, Firelight Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, NALAC, and Santa Fe Art Institute, among others. Through her art and filmmaking, Reveca creates work that invites audiences to see and care differently.

@revecart / www.revecatorres.com

M. Woods (He/Him/They/Them) is a multidisciplinary artist implementing avant-garde strategies under the studio name “Disassociative Productions”. M uses immersive time-based spectacle and constructed trances to navigate the internalized socio-political topographies of addiction, mental and physical disability, malignant nihilism, and white supremacy. M’s work deconstructs the post-911 acceleration of hyperrealism and (media)drug dependency, documenting the spread of solipsism in a media environment dominated by corporate neo-fascism.

www.thedigitalsickness.com

Joy Young is an impact storyteller, performance poet, scholar, educator, and curriculum development expert with years of experience focused on centering and amplifying marginal voices in the literary and performance arts.

Joy's performance work has been featured on Button Poetry, Everyday Feminism, SlamFind, and on stages, in classrooms and community spaces across the country. Joy has worked with an array of groups including Sandy Hook Promise and one-n-ten. Their facilitation and academic work has been presented at academic institutions from Arizona State University to Yale as well as through community-oriented organizations such as Disability Lead, and The Storytelling Institute.

www.joyyoung.org / @joyyoungpoetry