It’s a sunny spring afternoon when I meet Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen (b. 1974) on a video call. In this digital space, a bright, colourful, and sharp-witted disabled woman appears. As a disabled artist myself, I find Jenni-Juulia to be the kind of figure I hope to meet in my lifetime— someone who feels like a role model in a world that doesn’t always recognise us. What follows is a conversation about making art as a disabled creator, choosing your community, the importance of humour, hacking accessibility tools, and taking disabled people into space.
Jenni-Juulia’s art might be new to a mainstream—or let’s say non-disabled—audience, but it has long been celebrated within disabled communities. She has been an activist for decades, challenging the discrimination and stereotyping of disabled people through her work. She first gained international attention during the European Year of People with Disabilities in 2003. Her personal story is one of navigating obstacles—searching for fellow disabled artists, accessible galleries, and a space for disability art to reach a wider public. A turning point came when she was invited as one of three artists selected to represent Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia. While I’m always cautious about positioning disabled artists within narratives of “overcoming” or redemption arcs, this invitation undeniably shifted mainstream attention towards her work.
Jenni-Juulia’s practice stretches across themes and media, weaving historical ideas into a disabled perspective. Her art is provocative yet playful, challenging the status quo with humour, joy, and imagination. We begin our conversation by discussing her current exhibition at art space 1646 in The Hague, titled When I Grow Up, I Will Become a Coat Rack.
In the second room of the exhibition stands Flying Walker (2018), a modified mobility walker with wings made of crutches, reimagined as a tool for flight. As I take it in, I think of Da Vinci’s early fantastical flying machines and wonder how our collective art history might have looked different if disability had been part of the equation all along. Jenni-Juulia notes: “The medical device designers who design our mobility aids never ask us what ‘we’ want. I want us to be able to dream. Our dream isn’t to become able-bodied—our dream is, like everyone else’s, to fly.”
I smile, thinking of Frida Kahlo’s diary entry: “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” I nod in agreement—what if accessibility design wasn’t only about making life easier, but also about expanding what we could experience? Aren’t we all dreaming of going into space?
As part of the exhibition, 1646 commissioned composer Kemal Gorey to create a score for How Great Is Your Darkness?, an originally silent piece made mostly by disabled artists and activists, critiquing hate speech about people with disabilities in social and health care. “Art asks for social sustainability,” Jenni-Juulia tells me. “I don’t make these things alone. We create them together.”
This score is a precious piece, centralising audio description as a composition and not adding it as an afterthought. Collaborating with a visually disabled composer prioritises accessibility and positions it as a methodology of artmaking, rather than an afterthought. This score feels like a radio playing, where associations and connections appear through the combination of this piece and the video. It’s a beautiful example of how works can continue to grow and evolve through different exhibitions, as How Great Is Your Darkness? was made for the Venice Biennale, and now grew into a deeper layer with new audio contributions.
“It was a beautiful experience to meet someone like Jenni-Juulia. As a disabled maker, it’s always meaningful to meet your peers and feel that you’re not alone.”
Jenni-Juulia’s work is eclectic and, above all, funny. Humour, she tells me, is a tool—a way to invite people into difficult conversations without making them feel attacked. “It gives me the position of a jester,” she says. “I want people to experience their mobility aids as something fun. I want humour that uplifts us, not humour that makes us the punchline.” Jenni-Juulia is a powerhouse of a disabled woman—creating with joy and defiance, inviting us to dream even when the world is structured to keep us small.
I’ve always thought of art as a space for prefigurative politics—a place where we can imagine the world after the revolution has finally happened. Jenni-Juulia’s work does this, too. In Sound Machine of Prosthetics of Merthyr Tydfil (2019), she presents a wooden mobility aid, designed as if it were an early modernist classic—something you’d find celebrated in design museums, displayed next to Thonet’s iconic No. 14 Chair from 1859. It’s a striking commentary: we have long glorified fancy chairs, yet we’ve rarely afforded mobility aids the same cultural status, or even framed chairs as a mobility aid. This reimagining turns disability into a presence rather than an afterthought, and portrays the missed opportunity for the non-disabled world to recognise the richness of disabled culture. This sculpture, referring to the sound of wooden feet, touches upon the mining accidents and amputees of a mining city in Wales, and resonates in The Hague with its sound of wooden clumps.
Her background as a textile artist adds another layer to her work. Beadwork and textile design have long histories of resistance, particularly among marginalised groups and women. But for Jenni-Juulia, it’s not just about decoration—she uses these materials to tell multiple stories at
once, questioning ideas of “outsider art,” the aesthetics of accessibility, and the evolving nature of disabled cultural identity. She reminds us that disability is not static; it moves, shifts, and expands. Her work offers us a glimpse of a disabled future.
Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s solo exhibition When I Grow Up, I Will Become a Coat Rack was exhibited at 1646 in The Hague, The Netherlands, from 7 February to 13 April. Curated by Clara Pallí Monguilod and Johan Gustavsson, the exhibition was supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux and forms part of the pARTir initiative, funded by the European Union—NextGenerationEU and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation. Let this exhibition be a call to action for more disability art in galleries and cultural institutions—not as an afterthought or diversity checklist, but for the true potential it holds in including disability narratives in contemporary art spaces.
Josefien (b. 1994) is a writer and maker, born with Fibular Hemimelia – a rare congenital disability. Josefien Cornette is an artist and writer with a multidisciplinary practice grounded in art history, feminism, queer studies, and disability studies. In 2023, Josefien published their first book titled ‘A House Called Pain’, in which they write about disability, grief, and the loss of a loved one.
The article is supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, and is part of the pARTir initiative funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU programme.
