Eliza Chandler

Earning her PhD from the Social Justice and Education department at the University of Toronto in 2014, Eliza Chandler was dually appointed as the Artistic Director at Tangled Art + Disability, an organization in Toronto dedicated to the cultivation of disability arts, and the postdoctoral research fellow in Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Disability Studies from 2014-2016. During this time she was the also the founding Artistic Director of Tangled Art Gallery, Canada’s first art gallery dedicated to showcasing disability art and advancing accessible curatorial practice. Chandler is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the co-director of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded partnership project, Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life. This seven-year, multi-partnered research project considers the close relationship between art, accessibility, and social change as it contributes to the development of activist art, aesthetics, curriculum, and accessible curatorial practices across Canada. Chandler sits on the Board of Directors for the Ontario Arts Council and is a practicing disability artist and curator. She recently co-curated the group exhibitionBodies in Translation: Age and Creativity at the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery and recent publications include Disability Arts and Re-Worlding Possibilities, a/b: Auto-Biographic Studies (2018). Chandler regularly give lectures, interviews, and consultations related to disability arts, accessible curatorial practices, and disability politics in Canada.

Bodies In Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life

SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL OF CANADA (SSHRC) PARTNERSHIP GRANT, 2016

Principal investigator: DR. Carla Rice; Co-Director: Dr. Eliza Chandler

Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT) is intended to establish a community-university research program that builds and expands upon a working relationship between Project Re·Vision and Tangled Art + Disability, Ontario’s leading disability arts organization that cultivates disability, d/Deaf, and Mad arts in Ontario (Artistic Director: Eliza Chandler). In partnership with Tangled, and along with 11 community-based organizations and 12 academic institutions, BIT will set in motion a creative and intellectual wave of leading-edge artistic creation research, technological innovation, and critical inquiry within and beyond Ontario. Blending theories and practices of disability arts, feminist arts, and community arts, this grant explores how, and to what ends, we can cultivate arts that re-figure bodies/minds of difference.

For more information, please visit the website: www.bodiesintranslation.ca