Art Metropole

#16899

Esse Issue 117: Crip

Price

$15.50

Date

2026

Publisher

Esse

Format

Periodicals

Genre

Canadian, Arts Writing

Issue 117 – Spring Summer 2026 – Crip

While “handi” (short for the term “handicapé” in French) and “crip” (derived from “cripple,” meaning “disabled”) are diminutive forms of stigmatizing terms, the meaning we ascribe to them is by no means reductive. On the contrary, they carry a political weight that provides those who embrace them with a powerful tool for empowerment, offering disabled artists non-normative ways for articulating the strange temporalities of disabled experience and alternative ways for navigating an ableist art world. In this issue, we are interested precisely in this work of social, political, and cultural transformation, and we focus on the ways in which crip authors and artists address the different challenges they face.