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Olivia Dreisinger
Olivia Dreisinger (b. 1991) is a disabled artist, scholar, and writer. Her own fluctuating physical abilities often dictates how she produces work
— a process that regularly leads her to new and generative mediums to explore.
Artist Biography
Her past work has investigated disability representation and knowledge-sharing practices in disabled fan communities, from disabled!, an experimental 3D animated video documentary that examines the role of disability in fanfiction, to Handler is crazy, a documentary about a cosplaying service dog team. Some of her upcoming work includes Alt-Text Selfies, a collaboration with disabled artists Finnegan Shannon and Bojana Coklyat that celebrates image descriptions that accompany self-portraits online; Diagnosis Grad School, a podcast series about being disabled in graduate school; and What Kind of Mother, a documentary film about her mother’s suicide. Her work has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council. In 2021, she received the Emerging Digital Artist Award by EQ Bank. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at the University of British Columbia in the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine.
Artist Statement
disabled! is an experimental video documentary that examines the role of disability in fanfiction. Narrated through a fan-made avatar of River Tam from the television show Firefly—a non-visibly disabled character that serves as a stand-in for the artist’s own imperceptibly unwell body—viewers are taken on a tour of the many worlds of fanfiction. Paralleling the inherent inquisitiveness and ingenuity of the genre with the artist’s own quest for alternate ways of living, the work creates space to challenge and reimagine our understanding of disability.
disabled!, 2017
Still 2
River Tam stands barefoot in the desert. She is leaning over, looking at a branch resting in the sand. Her hair falls off to one side of her face. She is wearing a red dress with delicate silver thread details. The frame is cropped extremely close-up—River’s lower half and head visible in the shot.
disabled!, 2017
Still 3
A 3D rendered version of Bella Swan, a character from Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, is pushing a young teenage girl in her wheelchair through a school hallway. River Tam stands in the foreground, to the left of the image, holding a red marker in her right hand. A bright red “X” has been drawn over the wheelchair.
