This Saturday, 31 artists will disrupt 30 museums across the UK with surreal interventions intended to honour the 102nd anniversary of the First International Dada Exhibition, staged in Berlin in 1920.
All the artists taking part identify as d/Deaf, disabled or neurodivergent. The event has been organised by DASH, a disabled-led visual arts charity based in London, and funded £125,000 ($152,000) through the Ampersand Foundation Award.
“We Are Invisible We Are Visible” was first concocted in 2020 as a response to the question of what the Dada movement would have been like if it had emerged during lockdown. Reviving the spirit of Dada aims to challenge assumptions about disabled people and explore ideas around accessibility, communication, and representation.
The works planned are primarily performances, dance, and nonsensical happenings, and the venues taking part include Tate’s four locations in London, Liverpool, and St Ives, Turner Contemporary in Margate, the Hepworth Wakefield, the Arnolfini in Bristol, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Manchester Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Modern Art Oxford.