Disabled Baddie - Sammy
Oil on canvas, 2024
91 x 122cm
Advocate, comedian, writer, model, creator and all-around disabled baddie Sammy is no stranger to the absurd, offensive, or downright bizarre things people feel entitled to say to her. She’s built her comedy around the “You Can’t Ask That” moments she encounters almost daily:
“Can you have sex?” “Do you need help?” “Can I pray for you?”
Drawing humour from ignorance, Sammy is an expert at flipping discomfort into punchlines. But beneath the laughter lies a razor-sharp critique of ableism and the ways society infantilizes, dismisses, or tokenises disabled people especially women.
She’s often cast in the public eye as the “token cripple” a role she’s tired of playing. “A lot of good intentions,” she says, “come from a selfish place they’re about making *you* feel better, not me.”
When I asked Sammy how she wanted to be painted, she showed me a photo of herself in lingerie and said simply: “Like this.”
In this work, her gaze dares the viewer: “Did you really just say that?” She’s confrontational, sexual, and unapologetically adult a direct response to years of being patronised, called “dear” and “darling,” and treated as anything but a full, complex, adult woman.
Advocate, comedian, writer, model, creator and all-around disabled baddie Sammy is no stranger to the absurd, offensive, or downright bizarre things people feel entitled to say to her. She’s built her comedy around the “You Can’t Ask That” moments she encounters almost daily:
“Can you have sex?” “Do you need help?” “Can I pray for you?”
Drawing humour from ignorance, Sammy is an expert at flipping discomfort into punchlines. But beneath the laughter lies a razor-sharp critique of ableism and the ways society infantilizes, dismisses, or tokenises disabled people especially women.
She’s often cast in the public eye as the “token cripple” a role she’s tired of playing. “A lot of good intentions,” she says, “come from a selfish place they’re about making *you* feel better, not me.”
When I asked Sammy how she wanted to be painted, she showed me a photo of herself in lingerie and said simply: “Like this.”
In this work, her gaze dares the viewer: “Did you really just say that?” She’s confrontational, sexual, and unapologetically adult a direct response to years of being patronised, called “dear” and “darling,” and treated as anything but a full, complex, adult woman.
