Riva Lehrer is a Chicago-based painter, teacher and writer who has lived with spina bifida since birth. Her talent is fierce, and she is a force to be reckoned with. Many of Lehrer’s paintings and drawings are of her colleagues and her friends—i.e. influential thinkers, artists and activists from within the disability rights movement. Her work urges us to consider disability as “a political, social, and revolutionary identity of our times,” and shows us “how a new mode of ‘being disabled’ is taking shape at the beginning of the 21st century.”

In Riva’s own words:

“CIRCLE STORIES is a series of portraits of people with careers in the arts, academia and political activism. Each has a significant physical disability, and explores body issues in his or her own work. This project began in 1997 and was completed in 2004.

The term ‘Circle Stories’ refers to multiple aspects of the project. The portraiture method is a circular one, involving extensive interviews with each participant, in which we talk about their lives, work, and understanding of disability. Through this collaborative process, we seek imagery that is a truthful representation of their experience.

In addition, the circle of the wheelchair is the nearly universal symbol of disability, a wheel that transforms the ordinary object of the chair into the mark of physical and social difference.

Finally, my work aims to chart the existence of a community of disabled innovators who provide support and context for the work of redefinition of disability in the 21st century.

This, for me, is the most important circle of all.”

Circle Stories Gallery

(Note: click on thumbnails to see full size versions—images open as pop-ups)

Bonus drawing: Mat Fraser

In Riva’s own words:

“In this series [titled Totems and Familiars], I have asked people (disabled and otherwise) to conceptualize their sources of strength.  In particular, I asked for them to tell me about their totems (object of power) or familiars (as in a witch’s familiar: an animal alter ego). In basing the drawings around these images, I hope to show how imagining one’s invisible self/selves relate to one’s outer persona.

Mat Fraser portrait (warning: contains nudity)

(click to view full size)

To view more of Riva’s amazing work, including the rest of her Totems and Familiars gallery, please visit: www.rivalehrer.com.

Related
Mat Fraser appears way back in Irked’s first issue!