Exhibition Interdependence
On Disability Justice and the (Performing) Arts
- Start date
- 15 May 2025
- End date
- 28 May 2025
- Time
- 16:00
- Location
- BG 3
- Room
- VOX-POP
Mira Thompson is an advocate for disability justice, singer, performer, artist and teacher-researcher. Carly Everaert is a costume designer, curator, artist and teacher-researcher. Their collaboration began within Everaert’s Radical Thinking course at the Scenography department of the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. Sharing a deep interest in intersectional theory, embodied knowledge and accessible artistic practices, they explore how disability justice can be both a theoretical framework and a practical method for reshaping art education and production.
The exhibition features two open-source video lessons from their project:
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On access intimacy
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On pain worth sharing
These video lessons invite reflection, dialogue and embodied engagement. Visitors can view the videos on-site and take part in the lessons using printed manuals, image descriptions, and provided art materials.
Letter writing has been an important research method in the collaboration between Mira and Carly. They have been using this embodied practice in their work and collaborations. Letter exchanges that will be on display in the exhibition are between Mira & Carly , Laura Cull ó Maoilearca & Mira and Menko Dijksterhuis & Carly
Visitor Information
The exhibition is free and open to the public from 16 to 28 May 2025, Monday to Friday, 10:00 – 17:00, at VOX-POP (University of Amsterdam), public holidays excluded.
Context Programme
Opening - Thursday 15 May, 16:00 - 18:30.
- Introduction “Interdependence: On Disability Justice and the (Performing) Arts by Laura Cull ó Maoilearca
- LAUNCH of the video-essay lesson “On pain worth sharing.”
- Q&A with Everaert and Thompson moderated by Laura Cull ó Maoilearca
Workshop - Thursday 22 May, 16:00 - 17:30
Mira Thompson and Carly Everaert will be teaching in person their video-essay lesson “On pain worth sharing.”
Lecture 'Sick Garden' - Wednesday 28 May,10:30 - 12:00
A Lecture on Toni Kritzer's Sick Garden project. In THE SICK GARDEN, Toni interweaves their personal experience of chronic illness with the story of an abandoned garden, inviting us to look differently at care, ecology and recovery. This poetic performance - full of snails, viruses and webs of interspecies support - calls for calm and resistance to capitalist ideas of health and productivity.
Interdependence is a project within the Lectorate of the Academy of Theatre and Dance in collaboration with Platform 2025 as part of the Thematic Collaboration Program of the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Mira Thompson (Amsterdam, 1993) is a singer, songwriter and performer. Informed by the tradition of vocal jazz, she is drawn to narrative song and strong poetic and visual elements within music. During her time at HKU Utrecht Conservatory, she developed a fascination for the different ways in which the voice can function as an embodied instrument. Whether written, spoken or sung, Mira wields language to evoke deep and buried feelings with an earnest yet witty approach. In 2019 she released her first EP Festina Lente. Since 2008 she has performed nationally at Mozaïek Theater, Frascati, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, among others, and has toured in Germany and France.
Carly Everaert (1960) is a costume designer and scenographer. Since 2009, they have been teaching at the Scenography department of the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam, combining artistic research and education. Everaert explores themes such as sustainability, embodied knowledge, and intersectionality, often in collaboration with other makers and researchers. In 2022, they received the Proscenium Prize for their entire body of work. Both within and beyond the theatre, Everaert develops installations, costumes, and educational materials that invite critical reflection and collective imagination.
