Meet Zoe, BA (Hons) Media and Design alumna, contemporary visual artist, and disability activist
Zoe unites her lived experience of a chronic health condition with historic moments of the disability rights movement and more recent contemporary struggles for equity.
She creates artwork which repositions the disabled experience through the lens of creativity and self-expression.
Zoe studied BA (Hons) Media and Design at the University of Portsmouth between 1989 and 1992 and has since also studied at Birmingham City University and Nottingham Trent University.
Valentine’s Day reminds us that sometimes we all need to take a step back and use love as a connecting force to each other, not only with our loved ones but also with the many people who are sometimes excluded or not celebrated in the mainstream.
The piece is a permanent light-based work exploring love as dignity and equality rather than sentimentality or condescension.
Connecting historical moments with contemporary struggles
My neon works, including Love Not Pity, connect historical moments of the disability rights movement in the 1980s and 1990s with contemporary struggles for equity, identity, visibility and self-expression. My art rejects pity and conventional narratives around disabled people, instead using vivid, defiant imagery to call for justice and recognition.
One way I am challenging the misrepresentation of disability is through my artwork which celebrates the history of disabled people and dispels the ‘pitying’ messages often aligned with disabled people.
Fundamentally punchy
My wall-mounted neon text artwork titled Love Not Pity, a disability rights slogan calling for genuine connection rather than pity, highlights the many layers of how we project ourselves and others. It’s part of a series of nine artworks which are fundamentally punchy and captivating, providing a unique dialogue about difference and representation.
The catalyst for this work was my friend and colleague Barbara Lisicki, disability rights activist and comedian.
Barbara shared many stories with me of disabled people who fought for equal rights to address the lack of accessibility for disabled people and others. This prompted me to research disability slogans which disabled people have used on campaign boards, like ‘love not pity’, which recentres love and connection.
My artistic work challenges ableist norms and repositions the disabled experience instead as a central lens for creativity and change
My journey into showcasing hidden disabilities started at the University of Portsmouth
In my final year at the University of Portsmouth, I wrote about how women are represented and created a 6ft chest of drawers with the stories of different women in each drawer. In many ways, this student project was the start of my journey into showcasing hidden disabilities in my art. At some point I would like to recreate it.
More recently, my artistic work challenges ableist norms and repositions the disabled experience instead as a central lens for creativity and change. My art intersects sound, light, tactile experience, data, and space to communicate the lived realities and inner worlds of disabled people in a world in which our society often excludes disabled people from the mainstream — using my own body of work as both the medium and message.
My other artworks also include Decoding Difference and ‘Squarinthecircle’
Decoding Difference is a sound and light installation based on my own biological data, such as my blood glucose level and heartbeat which builds on the idea that the sculpture is the artist themself. The piece was shown at Somerset House in 2023 and asserts that difference is strength — showing the dynamics of your body not as deficit, but as life, agency, and human complexity.
In 2007 I returned to the University of Portsmouth to work with the University on placing a piece of art by colleague and disabled artist Tony Heaton in the Lion Gate Square called ‘Squarinthecircle’. I raised over £310,000 to ensure this piece was developed for everyone in collaboration with DADA (Disability Arts Development Agency).
Set up to tackle tough moments
A memory I will always treasure from my days at the University of Portsmouth was canoeing from Portsmouth over to the Isle of Wight with my canoe club. It was quite a feat for me as I was the only woman to paddle over and return and I was also balancing my diabetes. Controlling this was manageable but something I just needed to consider.
Getting back to Southsea beach was a fantastic feeling. I felt very proud of what I achieved and this set me up to tackle tough moments and situations for many years to come. It wasn’t just the physical capacity but the mental strength to keep paddling.
Sometimes we all feel like we are paddling upstream and the chaos is never going to end, but somehow it always does and we can breathe again and create new adventures near to where we live too.
You don’t have to climb a mountain to feel strong, but we do need to connect with each other and learn to live together with people who are different to us to feel valuable.
Browse more of Zoe's artwork on her website.