IC Interview: Jessica Blinkhorn — Idea Capital Atlanta

By Paul Boshears

Image shows artist Jessica Blinkhorn performing her work Reverence: We 3. She is in a wheelchair outside in front of a pavillion. She is wearing a white dress and has a golden mask on the lower half of her face. She is wearing a radiant tiara — Jessica Blinkhorn’s *Reverence: We 3*; courtesy of the artist.

Jessica Blinkhorn is the 2021 recipient of the Margaret Kargbo Artist as Activist grant. Kargbo died with Frank Barham while working on the Wheel 2 Live project. Barham was traveling in his wheelchair 302 miles from Atlanta to Savannah, to raise awareness for the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Blinkhorn’s performance-based works have garnered her funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, C4, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Nexus grand and opportunities including the Paseo Project Artist in Residence Program in Taos, New Mexico. Currently she is preparing for her role as curator of the 17th annual Art in Odd Places performance festival in New York this fall.

Jessica Blinkhorn

To receive the Margaret Kargbo grant is a huge honor. Being a disabled artist living independently, working five jobs just to pay for my cost of living with the inclusion of my SSDI check, this grant—I can tell you, it definitely helped me purchase some things that I needed for my performances. I will use that money to ensure that I can pay people to be there and help me as I commit these 3-hour performances.

Paul Boshears

I really appreciate that you are consistently finding ways to incorporate other artists into your works. It speaks volumes to your pursuit of community and insistence on practices that follow closely with the rhetoric. How has the Pandemic impacted you and your sense of connection to Community?

Jessica Blinkhorn

The pandemic gave me a time to recalibrate. Some people found it as their lives stopping I found me questioning my life and my existence, as well as the existence of my community.

Hearing the horror stories of the elderly people left sick and dying, during COVID, and bodies being found of those who are disabled and elderly, and yet this nearly no mainstream media attention. Hearing, the stories of my friends tell me like they haven't been able to go outside, they just want to go outside, they can't find care, hearing the stories, how people from my community had to go back into the care of their elderly parents just to survive...

I started thinking about what it was I wanted my work to say, and what the end game of all this was. And I realized, I grew up with a very loud, and a very loud house, very loud house. And my mom was a public advocate for the disabled. When I was younger, the whole reason I was allowed to go to the high school in my zone—because back in the 80s, they bussed you, they bussed you to a different schools aren't if you didn't have a program for disability, you were shipped to the school that did. My mom fought so that I could go to high school in my home district, my mom fought so that playgrounds were made accessible.

Jessica Blinkhorn, *Graze*. Courtesy of the artist.

You know, I remember my mom taking me to my first protest when I was, I think, eight years old, and I saw a man throw himself out of his wheelchair. I come from a very vocal family. I have the charisma of my father, but I have the determination of my mother. And I decided that's a lot in my corner. And I needed to make the best use of my voice. You know?

It's no secret that my disability which is spinal muscular atrophy, type two, is a degenerative muscle- wasting disease. It starts with your trunk muscles, it goes all the way out your limbs, and then it comes back in for involuntary muscles. I lost my brother in 2010. And I lost my sister in 2014. And so every day that I live is a day that I live for them and in their memory. And I don't want to simply create pretty pictures of people's faces.

The image shows artist Jessica Blinkhorn performing her work Who Am I Who Are You? She is in a wheelchair and she is rolling down a street with cars beside her. — Jessica Blinkhorn’s *Who Am I Who Are You?* Courtesy of the artist.

Don't get me wrong, I love to do a portrait of somebody when they ask for my work. And I love to see the face that they make when they see what I've done for them. But at this point in my life, drawing only serves as a reminder of what my disability has taken away. And I don't want to focus on that. I still draw but not without great pain and difficulty.

With my Reverence pieces, they came, they became my way of saying, “I'm here, we're here, we're a part of this community, and we have a voice.” Reverence is an object that serves as a reminder, you know? An object of reverence is an object that serves as a reminder of a presence. And so I think about all of the death that I've faced in my life and how I'm able to handle that with a certain amount of grace, because it's so normalized in my life, and how those people who only existed for a short time in my world, left an indelible impression on my mind, and in my heart. For them to be a memory that carries the weight of their presence in my life. I wanted to start creating work that takes a more advocate-like, an advocacy route, and that's where Reverence came from.

Reverence: We 3 is a performance series where I placed myself as an object of reverence in a location that is either breaking the Americans with Disability Act guidelines, there's a failure to maintain ADA guidelines or there is no existence of accommodations under the ADA. I set myself up in that location. And I'm joined by two empty wheelchairs one to my right, one on my left. These symbols of my sister and my brother are with me every time I perform; every day I live. But they also represent the people who have fought and continue to fight in my community for inclusion, equity and equality.

And they also remind us that anyone—at any given time—could join this community and take a seat next to me. And that's something that we need to be reminded every day.

Jessica Blinkhorn, *Gyrate*. Courtesy of the artist.

Paul Boshears

Just to make sure that I that I represent you well. You've at several points throughout our conversation here is use the phrase my community I want to make sure that that I am attributing correctly. Who is when you say my community, who are you referring to?

Jessica Blinkhorn

I refer to my community as the disabled aging community. But in my work, my work represents the disabled, aging, LGBTQ plus community because those are the communities with most intersectionality their umbrella communities, everybody can be a part of that. We are not exclusionary, we practice inclusion, because everyone is a part of that community. Everyone, everyone will age, you know, anyone can be disabled and anyone can be gay, straight, bi-, trans-, queer, asexual, intersex, femme, masc, cis, et cetera.

What we fight for it is not necessarily only for us. Whether through age, or accident, you will face the challenges we face— it's only a matter of time—and people will be best served to remember that. So these performances are a reflection of our present, our past, and everyone's impending future.

The image shows artist Jessica Blinkhorn performing her work Reverence: We 3. She is outside and it is nighttime. She is in an art deco, black and white breezeway. She is wearing a white dress, a gold mask covers her lower face. — Jessica Blinkhorn, *Reverence: We 3*. Courtesy of the artist.

Paul Boshears

It's a wonderful kind of entry point. Right? Because you're talking about your craft you're talking a bit of biography there and how we are together in this world or how we choose to ignore how we are in this world.

Jessica Blinkhorn

I am disabled, this is who I am, it's not going to change. I want people to realize that you cannot put forward my story as an inspirational one unless you're willing to share the challenges faced by my community. Otherwise the only thing you're sharing is a lack of self-awareness of your own mortality.

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