In their video works "Impaired: Volume I – Compassion," and "Impaired: Volume II – Mutual Aid," we get to know the two brothers who, indeed, share compassion and mutual aid. Carmen Papalia is a visually impaired artist, and his compassionate brother Antonio Papalia "takes the cane for a walk" to accompany Antonio, who is sometimes self-conscious about using his cane in public.

In addition to his visual impairment, Carmen has other health issues that lead to pain, and so the two grow cannabis to help manage the pain of, among other things, two hip replacements. Cannabis helps in other ways, too – Carmen is soothed by physically feeling the plants, and the practice of growing the plants also is healing. In their resistance to the pharmaceutical industry, the brothers share kinship.

The videos are on view as part of Smoke & Mirrors at the Zimmerli Art Museum through December 22. The exhibition features the work of 14 artists with disabilities who use humor, antagonism, transparency, and invisibility. It also makes the viewer aware of the barriers museums present to people with disabilities.

Installation shots Smoke & Mirrors. Photo McKay Imaging Photography.

Most of the exhibitions of artists with disabilities that I have seen in the past involve intellectual disabilities, and there is often a therapeutic component to their art-making. Here, most of the artists have physical disabilities, and these artists not only work with their disabilities but make them a focus of the art. Curator Amanda Cachia, a professor at the University of Houston with a Ph.D. in art history, identifies as having a physical disability. She is a prominent disability arts activist and scholar who encourages visitors with disabilities and their allies to become active participants in telling their own stories as well as increasing museum visibility of artists with disabilities.

The two “Impaired” videos, for example, can be experienced by those without sight because of the audio description. In fact the audio description is so detailed and graphic that I, as a sighted person, had trouble keeping up watching and listening, and yet for a person who cannot see, this description provides thorough, and poetic, detail. In fact I could close my eyes and “see” the imagery, thanks to the evocative audio description.

Fiber artist Sugandha Gupta has created wearable art on dress forms along with a table of fiber samples to experience through touch. The labels do not always spell out the artist’s disability, but rather describe their way of working. “She uses large eye needles and touch to thread her loom, felting by immersing herself in the process through touch, and audio descriptions to navigate learning new techniques. She manipulates fabrics through different techniques such as embroidery, sewing, knitting, crochet, and felting.”

“Sensory Design is an approach to making through embodied experience & knowledge,” Gupta says on her website. She uses natural fibers such as paper, silk, cotton, and wool and adds scents as well as sounds to create an immersive and evocative experience for her audience.

At the center of the gallery space is a massage chair. We could all use a good massage. I observed a man sitting in it, moaning like the character who describes feigning orgasm in the 1989 classic “When Harry Met Sally.” His two female companions were bowled over in laughter.

Installation shots Smoke & Mirrors. Photo McKay Imaging Photography.

Perhaps because I was very aware that the exhibition design was focused on giving sensory experience to people who don’t usually find it in museum exhibitions, my experience in the chair was quite different. In fact, if I had cried out it would have been in agony as I felt the chair squeezing too tightly, rolling hard balls on my feet, and putting me in unnatural positions. As I stared at the signage on the wall — “Stray amulet of disability culture” — I wondered if the awkwardness I felt as a result of this chair tipping me in odd positions was intended to make me feel what it was like to be bound to a wheelchair, unable to control my experience. There was an emergency “off” switch which, ultimately, I found myself using to escape. But in the world of disability, there are no emergency off-switches.

The artist Finnegan Shannon says the massage chair, “I Want to Believe,” is “about the desire for and impossibility of pain relief.” There is audio (not playing when I was there) of the artist reading a text composed from the Hammacher Schlemmer ad copy for pain relief, promising everything from calming inflammation and enhancing blood circulation to promoting good posture and softening the skin. Shannon refers to “the seductive ways capitalism tends to overpromise the relief that will come from using certain tools, products, and procedures.”

Shannon really does want to make visitors more comfortable. For “Alt Text as Poetry,” there is a comfy seating area with bowls of candy. The moaning man and his companions were enjoying it all.

Installation shots Smoke & Mirrors. Photo McKay Imaging Photography.

In the final gallery space, my first reaction was: “I’m not supposed to be here.” The space was cordoned off with black stanchions and red wire linked through them. This is actually an installation by Irish artist Corban Walker who, at four feet tall, often feels prohibited from experiencing works of art properly. Here he turns the tables on the viewers so they must navigate their own path through this web, thus walking in his shoes.

“This exhibition of contemporary artists with disabilities is central to the Zimmerli's mission of focusing on diversity, equity, access, and inclusion,” said museum director Maura Reilly, who invited Cachia to curate the exhibition. “We always strive to open the museum to new and underrepresented voices and to provide new means of access to reach all audiences. We are equally committed to rethinking the function of a museum to be a responsive and inclusive institution.”

The exhibition title, “Smoke & Mirrors,” refers to the idea of an illusion, of smoke covering up truth and a mirror reflecting it, says Cachia. “When we go to see an exhibition as a non-disabled person, being in a public space we take for granted how easy it is to move from point A to B, but it’s more challenging for those for whom the design did not have them in mind, such as those with low vision or who are blind or deaf or in a wheelchair.”  Short stature also makes it difficult to interact with art that is typically hung for average height. “It’s not all smoke and mirrors, being in a museum is not as easy as we think. The idea of the museum as a perfect place is a façade unless we think in someone else’s shoes.”

Touch is usually prohibited in museums, another barrier Cachia wants to break. Artist Erik Benjamins has a “Reflexology Doormat,” and visitors are invited to take off their shoes and walk on them. The mats are made of hand-pressed tiles and mimic the effect of reflexology walking paths often found in public park spaces in Asian cities, made of rounded stones half-set into concrete. The paths encourage physical and mental wellness, activating the many pressure points found on the base of the feet.

At 4-foot-3, the topic of height has always been close to Cachia’s heart. Growing up in Australia, she wondered why museums and galleries were mostly from the perspective of someone non-disabled. Her Ph.D. thesis addressed the topic. “There needs to be more of that, let’s build that conversation.”

Cachia has been curating exhibitions of artists with disabilities since 2011. “I used to be more intentional in how I used language but now I don’t deed to be so didactic. In 2011 I would say most of my audience was non-disabled, but now it’s very much disabled people who want to see this work, giving disabled people a place where they can be understood.”  

Her new book, “The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art and Institutional Critique” (Temple University Press), due out in December, “will provide more resources to those who see the show.”

“The overarching goal of ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ is that people have assumptions of what disabled people are capable of, but the experience is more complex and challenging than people realize,” says Cachia. “We are making it possible for the disabled to feel heard and understood.”

And it’s been successful. Disabled viewers at the opening came up to Cachia and told her they felt understood, “that I’ve created a space for them.”

Smoke & Mirrors is on display until December 22, 2024 at Zimmerli Art Museum (71 Hamilton Street) in New Brunswick, New Jersey.