Cripping the Galleries | Painting Disability Justice
August 29, 20262:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Tickets on sale soon. Ticket holders will meet in the MCA Learning Studios.
Genevieve Ramos, Mask Off, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
Join artist Genevieve Ramos to create paintings that respond to the themes of feminism and activism in the exhibition From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard. Using disability justice as a framework, the afternoon forefronts conversation, reflection, and learning how to think with paint. All are welcome—no previous painting experience required.
Access doulas—people who are trained to creatively support a range of access needs—will be on-site throughout the workshop to assist participants.
Cripping the Galleries is a collaborative series between the Art Institute of Chicago, Bodies of Work, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA), that features local artists activating museums through the lens of crip* culture and access. This summer, artist and educator Genevieve Ramos leads interactive workshops at our three institutions: Join Ramos at NMMA in the second half of July and the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday, August 22.
* Crip as a noun is pejorative, reclaimed by disabled people who embrace it as an outsider identity with an edge. To crip or cripping as a verb means to expose oppressive systems of normalcy and to imagine a world otherwise.
About the Artist
Genevieve Ramos (b. 1990) is a Mexican American queer painter, disability advocate, and cultural worker based in Chicago. Her vibrant paintings explore the intersections of feminism, disability justice, and identity, using bold color, figures, and symbolic imagery to tell stories of resilience and love that move us toward collective liberation.
Ramos’s work draws from her lived experience as a disabled artist and survivor, transforming personal narrative into collective empowerment. Through series like Feminist Crip Paint Power and Sustaining Spirit, she reimagines the body as both vulnerable and powerful—rooted in community, memory, and transformation. Her body of work collectively envisions our collective care, guided by her cripistemology, towards which she imagines an intersectional, collective liberation for all.
Event Partners
The Art Institute of Chicago shares its singular collections with our city and the world. They collect, care for, and interpret works of art across time, cultures, geographies, and identities, centering the vision of artists and makers. They recognize that all art is made in a particular context, demanding continual, dynamic reconsideration in the present. AIC is a place of gathering; they foster the exchange of ideas and inspire an expansive, inclusive understanding of human creativity.
Bodies of Work is a consortium of four programs at three Chicago organizations that share a commitment to programming that is distinguished by its integration of disability artistry, academics, and activism:
- Program on Disability Art, Culture, and Humanities and the Disability Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago;
- Disability Culture Activism Lab at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago;
- Art and Culture Project at Access Living.
Along with partnering artists and organizations, Bodies of Work serves as a catalyst for the development of disability art and culture that illuminates the disability experience in new and unexpected ways.
The National Museum of Mexican Art stimulates knowledge and appreciation of Mexican art and culture from both sides of the border through a significant permanent collection of Mexican art, rich visual and performing arts programs, high quality arts education programs and resources and professional development of Mexican artists.
Funding
Lead support for the 2025–26 season of MCA Talks is made possible by The Richard and Mary L. Gray Lecture Series through a generous gift to the Chicago Contemporary Campaign.
Generous support is provided by The Antje B. and John J. Jelinek Endowed Lecture and Symposium on Contemporary Art; the Kristina Barr Lectures, which were established through a generous gift by The Barr Fund to the Chicago Contemporary Campaign; The Gloria Brackstone Solow and Eugene A. Solow, MD, Memorial Lecture Series; and the Allen M. Turner Tribute Fund, honoring his past leadership as Chair of the Board of Trustees.