The Art of Intersectionality
Aurora Berger, In the Ferns, 2018, digital photograph
March is predominantly known as Women’s History Month, but it is also National Disability Awareness Month. We interviewed Aurora Berger, a queer and disabled artist living and working in Vermont, about her art, her activism and her work as an educator. At Humble Oak, we believe what makes each of us interesting is the way the different aspects of identity intersect -- we hope you enjoy reading what Aurora has to say!
One of the first things that jumps out at me reading your bio is how your photography has a deeply intersectional message. Can you talk about how you experience intersectionality?
As a queer disabled artist, intersectionality is at the heart of a lot of my work because my work is about identity, it's about who I am and how I experience life. Those experiences are obviously influenced by society and cultural norms around heterosexuality and how people engage with those topics of disability or gender and sexuality.
I noticed your photos have a common thread of you connecting with nature.
All those nature images are about how I interact with my surroundings. For me it's a lot easier to be in nature because there aren't preconceived expectations of what a disabled body can be , and it's also because I grew up here, I learned to walk and talk and navigate the world. It feels a lot easier to be in nature than around other people.
How is it to hold the queer-disabled artist identity in Vermont vs in other places you've lived?
I've lived in VT for most of my life; I've also lived in Los Angeles. It was easier to hold these identities in LA, but there's always been pushback with regards to disability everywhere I've lived. It’s been pretty easy to be queer in LA and VT, but not in Arizona, where I went to college.
Can you elaborate on pushback?
Either there is no access and people are unwilling to make access, or there are people telling you that access is not needed. "You look fine, why would you need an accommodation?" That pushback has made its way into the art I've made. A lot of the self portraiture came from the internalized Ableism I had. I felt I needed to push myself physically to do things that I shouldn't be doing, and can't really do. Those photos came from me coming to terms with my body, and realizing how much I had internalized from other people's ableist beliefs about myself, and what a person can do.
I didn’t hold a disabled identity until later in life, but it’s a genetic condition I’ve had my whole life, I just didn't accept it as being a disability until college. I thought, “I'm fine, I'm normal, I don’t want extra help, I can do it.” Until I got to college and realized I actually can’t do it and it’s okay to accept help, it’s okay to have a body that doesn’t work the same as everyone else's. So, I had the health factors but not the identity piece until later on.
Aurora Berger, Clouded (blue), 2017, cyanotype
You have used your art not only as a way of expressing yourself, but also as a way to engage dialogue about topics like disability, queer identity, and our connection with the natural world. How has that been received within the communities you are a part of?
It's been received really well in art communities-- the art world has been pretty great. It's had a fair amount of success and that's been wonderful. It's hard to take naked photos of yourself and also be a public school teacher. There are some gray areas there, and it's kind of an “Only in Vermont thing.” Do I try to have a show in VT? Worry about people finding my work? Put my art under my real name? I've had middle schoolers find me on Instagram, and I've had to block them. It can be tricky to make art when your art can be kind of divisive and could be used against you.
I’ve had the opportunity frequently to see my art generate discussion that wasn't there before. I did a piece in grad school about connective tissue, it's a photo that has a whole bunch of tulle wrapped around my body. The tulle was supposed to symbolize how connective tissue is fragile and tangled. One of my professors became convinced it was a wedding dress and it became a several week debate over whether the piece was about feminism because it was a wedding dress or not. I ended up stopping using tulle in my work even though I loved it because it was not a wedding dress and I didn't want that association.
When I share my work in schools I tend to curate what it is, and when I show photos that are of my body I tend to show the PG ones.
In addition to your work as an artist, you are also a teacher, a summer camp director, a writer, a web designer. How do these roles work together to express your values?
I think as a writer and an artist I really want to be able to teach people who want to learn and that's a core value as a person. As a teacher, I get to do that. Because I teach little kids too, I get to foster a love of making and a love of art. I also get to help people think critically about important issues like disability, perception, self identity, how we perceive other people and ourselves and holding all of those different positions allows me to work with and reach a wider audience.
My students inspire me all the time. I'm constantly inspired by them, and they definitely make comments, and it's like “Wow, that's a great idea!” I don't have any work at the moment that was specifically inspired by a student. Tiny minds are geniuses. They say things that are like “Oh My God!” I don't know how you came up with that but I love it!”
Putting images of your body on display in public forums takes a lot of courage. Where do you get your courage?
I have a real separation between myself and the photos. There's a photographer called Sally Mann, one of my all time favorites.
She took a lot of photos of her kids when they were little, and they were often naked. In her memoir she recalls this moment with her daughter Jessie that has always resonated with me:
Once Jessie was trying on dresses to wear to an opening of the family pictures in New York. It was spring and one dress was sleeveless, but when Jessie raised her arms she realized that her chest was visible through the oversized armholes. When she tossed that dress aside, a friend of mine, watching the process, asked with some perplexity, “Jessie, I don’t get it. Why on earth would you care if someone can see your chest through the armholes when you are going to be in a room with a bunch of pictures that show that same bare chest?”
To which Jessie replied with equal perplexity at the friend’s ignorance: “Yes, but that is not my chest. Those are photographs.” (Sally Mann, Hold Still, 2015)
And that's how I feel.
Once, I had a giant self-portrait of my face that hung in my studio, always watching me. People asked, “Where do I get the comfort to sit with that?” But I said, “She's fine. She’s not me. She’s become her own entity.”
I see the photo prints as being their own little bodies. I think of them as taking on their own identities.
Pick three photos that are important to you. What question or message do they convey?
Vulnerable (Duo):They provided two technically wrong prints of a body. There are a lot of things you can do wrong in the art world. I'd fail if I turned either of these into a professor. But they mirror two different ways of being a body, two different perspectives on a body. The reason I use cyanotypes is that they have a lot of chance in the medium, you can't predict what it is going to look like. For both of these it wasn’t the print I was trying to get, but it ended up being the print that I got. And that's how it is with bodies.
Grid: Remnants from a Medical History. It was a giant grid on a wall. These are all moments from this experience I had when I took fabric photos into the woods and left them there for 3 months and I photographed them as they changed, as nature took its toll on them. These aren't my "best" images from the project, but they were the ones that told a story all together. It was me in the woods with my camera and my body and my decomposing photos.
Aurora Berger, Bleeding Out, 2018, digital photograph
Bleeding out: These fabric pieces took on their own lives, I thought of them as surrogate bodies,which is kind of interesting considering the separation I described earlier. I thought, let's take the pieces of me, and let them go back to the earth. They're cotton. If they totally disappeared it would be fine. A lot of being a perfect human body, the perfect black and white rectangular image disappears when you are in nature and that's okay. The damage that we see in these images made the pieces feel a lot more whole, whereas to someone else it might be bad to be stained, wrinkled, or to have more holes. To me, they were complete.
Is there anything you would say about how nature might help others?
I've been thinking about this. I think that being in that place that was foundational for you can be so important and therapeutic. For me, it is nature and for others it might not be, but I know a lot of people for whom it is so important to be in those spaces, and reconnect with the environment they were raised in. I lived in Arizona for 3 years, and everytime I go back I feel rejuvenated-- I needed this, it's been too long since I was with the canyons, cactuses and cottonwood groves. The places we spend time become a part of us, and spending time in them helps us reconnect with our past selves.