Changing the Outlook: Amanda Cachia

Amanda Cachia (Visual and Critical Studies 2012) is an independent curator originally from Sydney, Australia. Currently working on her PhD at the University of California, San Diego, she received her second master’s degree from CCA in 2012 in Visual and Critical Studies. Her dissertation is on the intersections between contemporary art, phenomenology, and disability.

Cachia is a dwarf activist who has served as chair of the Dwarf Artists Coalition for the Little People of America for seven years. Earlier this year, she won the Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies, issued by the Society for Disability Studies.

How did you decide on a career as a curator?

I knew I wanted to be in the arts somehow. When I was 18, at university in Wollongong, Australia, pursuing an artistic career, I realized that I preferred helping artists to being one. I started volunteering at a local gallery and found that curating was a way to be creative and still work with artists. I decided to pursue a master’s degree in curatorial studies at Goldsmiths in London. I was still very young—only 21—but I wanted to explore what was happening in the curating world internationally, especially in Europe. It was an incredible time for me! After I graduated, I found full-time work as a gallery curator and eventually the director of Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan.

What instigated your return to graduate school?

I saw that disability was not something people curated or thought about. I never came across exhibitions that explored disability in critical or creative ways. It was addressed only in terms of access—how to make art accessible to various audiences. When disability has been portrayed, historically, it’s always been in very reductive ways. Artists have the freedom to incorporate representations of disability, but they also ought to have a dialogue about how they’re doing it, why they’re doing it, and give a voice to the people they’re portraying rather than just benefiting from the “grotesque” aesthetic. I thought we needed to build a whole new discourse around disability in contemporary art practice. So: I was doing well in my career—I had a great job and I was curating great shows—but I knew I wanted to bring disability into my research and my thinking, and I needed time to do that.

How did you choose CCA?

I knew I wanted to be in a visual and critical studies program rather than an art history department. I flew to San Francisco and met with Tirza True Latimer, the chair of CCA’s program, knowing it had a history of being very strong and progressive in issues of critical race, feminism, and gender-based practices. So, even though they had never explored disability specifically, I knew that by turning to other marginalized discourses, I would find intersections. It’s scary to be doing something hardly anyone else is doing, but I had constant encouragement from my faculty and peers. CCA was really the foundation for building my confidence and strength as a writer and scholar.

You’ve worked as a curator and as a disability activist in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the United States. How do they compare in their recognition of the role of disabled people in the arts?

Australia, Canada, and the UK are all more advanced than the United States in terms of government funding for disability arts–related programming, and they have more disability arts organizations. In the United States, there isn’t nearly as much government funding, but there are more disability studies programs throughout academic departments. As a field it’s still developing. As a curator, I’m trying to get people to open up their perceptions about disability. Some of the shows I’ve curated have been at galleries that never before thought about disability or access. Haverford College in Pennsylvania made a website for my CCA thesis show What Can a Body Do? that’s fully accessible online, and they told me they’re going to make all the websites for their shows accessible from now on. That means that all the images and information can be viewed using a screen reader, which is especially useful for people who are visually impaired.

Who are some artists you find particularly inspiring?

Carmen Papalia, Christine Sun Kim, and Laura Swanson were in my CCA thesis show and I continue to work with them. My work wouldn’t be my work without the artists! They’re the ones who feed me creatively and make the field worth pursuing. I think they’re doing important work. The downside, of course, is that because of the stigma of disability, some artists are unsure if they want to be in my projects—they don’t want to be labeled as just a disabled artist. It’s my job to discuss why it’s useful and productive to talk about it in this way. To ask, “Why is important for us to all be together in the same room?”

How is your PhD work coming along?

The focus of my dissertation is the intersection of disability and contemporary art, and specifically on how an artist is informed by phenomenology as a way of knowing the world through our bodies, and how the disabled body might bring a new way of thinking about disability and contemporary art. The program is demanding, and I’m also teaching at UCSD. I’m still actively curating and attending conferences. My professors and advisors are hugely supportive, but since there’s no one else in my department working on this topic, it can be isolating at times. So I try to find like-minded folks at conferences who can encourage and support me.

Are there many other curators working today along similar lines of inquiry?

There’s very few of us. I know and work with the folks in the United States who are helping to expand this discourse. With international allies, we talk on Skype or the telephone. We’re developing the field collaboratively—trying to build a revolution together!