{"id":8426,"date":"2025-05-30T15:40:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T12:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/?p=8426"},"modified":"2025-05-30T15:40:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T12:40:40","slug":"jenni-juulia-wallinheimo-heimonen-disabled-futures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/jenni-juulia-wallinheimo-heimonen-disabled-futures\/","title":{"rendered":"Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen \u2013 Disabled Futures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Josefien Cornette: David Degelin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s a sunny spring afternoon when I meet Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen (b. 1974) on a\u00a0 video call. In this digital space, a bright, colourful, and sharp-witted disabled woman appears. As\u00a0 a disabled artist myself, I find Jenni-Juulia to be the kind of figure I hope to meet in my lifetime\u2014 someone who feels like a role model in a world that doesn\u2019t always recognise us. What follows is\u00a0 a conversation about making art as a disabled creator, choosing your community, the importance\u00a0 of humour, hacking accessibility tools, and taking disabled people into space.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jenni-Juulia\u2019s art might be new to a mainstream\u2014or let\u2019s say non-disabled\u2014audience, but it has\u00a0 long been celebrated within disabled communities. She has been an activist for decades,\u00a0 challenging the discrimination and stereotyping of disabled people through her work. She first\u00a0 gained international attention during the European Year of People with Disabilities in 2003. Her\u00a0 personal story is one of navigating obstacles\u2014searching for fellow disabled artists, accessible\u00a0 galleries, and a space for disability art to reach a wider public. A turning point came when she\u00a0 was invited as one of three artists selected to represent Finland at the 60th International Art\u00a0 Exhibition\u2014La Biennale di Venezia. While I\u2019m always cautious about positioning disabled artists\u00a0 within narratives of \u201covercoming\u201d or redemption arcs, this invitation undeniably shifted\u00a0 mainstream attention towards her work.<\/p>\n

Jenni-Juulia\u2019s practice stretches across themes and media, weaving historical ideas into a\u00a0 disabled perspective. Her art is provocative yet playful, challenging the status quo with humour,\u00a0 joy, and imagination. We begin our conversation by discussing her current exhibition at art space\u00a0 1646 in The Hague, titled When I Grow Up, I Will Become a Coat Rack<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen. Kuva: Maija Lindstr\u00f6m<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the second room of the exhibition stands Flying Walker <\/i>(2018), a modified mobility walker with\u00a0 wings made of crutches, reimagined as a tool for flight. As I take it in, I think of Da Vinci\u2019s early\u00a0 fantastical flying machines and wonder how our collective art history might have looked different\u00a0 if disability had been part of the equation all along. Jenni-Juulia notes: \u201cThe medical device\u00a0 designers who design our mobility aids never ask us what \u2018we\u2019 want. I want us to be able to\u00a0 dream. Our dream isn\u2019t to become able-bodied\u2014our dream is, like everyone else\u2019s, to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

I smile, thinking of Frida Kahlo\u2019s diary entry: \u201cFeet, what do I need you for when I have wings to\u00a0 fly?\u201d I nod in agreement\u2014what if accessibility design wasn\u2019t only about making life easier, but\u00a0 also about expanding what we could experience? Aren\u2019t we all dreaming of going into space?<\/p>\n

As part of the exhibition, 1646 commissioned composer Kemal Gorey to create a score for How\u00a0 Great Is Your Darkness?<\/i>, an originally silent piece made mostly by disabled artists and activists,\u00a0 critiquing hate speech about people with disabilities in social and health care. \u201cArt asks for social\u00a0 sustainability,\u201d Jenni-Juulia tells me. \u201cI don\u2019t make these things alone. We create them together.\u201d<\/p>\n

This score is a precious piece, centralising audio description as a composition and not adding it\u00a0 as an afterthought. Collaborating with a visually disabled composer prioritises accessibility and\u00a0 positions it as a methodology of artmaking, rather than an afterthought. This score feels like a\u00a0 radio playing, where associations and connections appear through the combination of this piece\u00a0 and the video. It\u2019s a beautiful example of how works can continue to grow and evolve through\u00a0 different exhibitions, as How Great Is Your Darkness? <\/i>was made for the Venice Biennale, and\u00a0 now grew into a deeper layer with new audio contributions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a beautiful experience to meet someone like Jenni-Juulia. As a disabled maker, it\u2019s\u00a0 always meaningful to meet your peers and feel that you\u2019re not alone.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Jenni-Juulia\u2019s work is eclectic and, above all, funny. Humour, she tells me, is a tool\u2014a way to\u00a0 invite people into difficult conversations without making them feel attacked. \u201cIt gives me the\u00a0 position of a jester,\u201d she says. \u201cI want people to experience their mobility aids as something fun. I\u00a0 want humour that uplifts us, not humour that makes us the punchline.\u201d Jenni-Juulia is a\u00a0 powerhouse of a disabled woman\u2014creating with joy and defiance, inviting us to dream even\u00a0 when the world is structured to keep us small.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always thought of art as a space for prefigurative politics\u2014a place where we can imagine the\u00a0 world after the revolution has finally happened. Jenni-Juulia\u2019s work does this, too. In Sound\u00a0 Machine of Prosthetics of Merthyr Tydfil <\/i>(2019), she presents a wooden mobility aid, designed as\u00a0 if it were an early modernist classic\u2014something you\u2019d find celebrated in design museums,\u00a0 displayed next to Thonet\u2019s iconic No. 14 Chair from 1859. It\u2019s a striking commentary: we have\u00a0 long glorified fancy chairs, yet we\u2019ve rarely afforded mobility aids the same cultural status, or\u00a0 even framed chairs as a mobility aid. This reimagining turns disability into a presence rather than\u00a0 an afterthought, and portrays the missed opportunity for the non-disabled world to recognise the\u00a0 richness of disabled culture. This sculpture, referring to the sound of wooden feet, touches upon\u00a0 the mining accidents and amputees of a mining city in Wales, and resonates in The Hague with\u00a0 its sound of wooden clumps.<\/p>\n

Her background as a textile artist adds another layer to her work. Beadwork and textile design\u00a0 have long histories of resistance, particularly among marginalised groups and women. But for\u00a0 Jenni-Juulia, it\u2019s not just about decoration\u2014she uses these materials to tell multiple stories at<\/p>\n

once, questioning ideas of \u201coutsider art,\u201d the aesthetics of accessibility, and the evolving nature\u00a0 of disabled cultural identity. She reminds us that disability is not static; it moves, shifts, and\u00a0 expands. Her work offers us a glimpse of a disabled future.<\/p>\n

Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen\u2019s solo exhibition When I Grow Up, I Will Become a Coat\u00a0 Rack <\/i>was exhibited at 1646 in The Hague, The Netherlands, from 7 February to 13 April. Curated\u00a0 by Clara Pall\u00ed Monguilod and Johan Gustavsson, the exhibition was supported by the Finnish\u00a0 Cultural Institute for the Benelux and forms part of the pARTir initiative, funded by the European\u00a0 Union\u2014NextGenerationEU and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation. Let this exhibition be a call to\u00a0 action for more disability art in galleries and cultural institutions\u2014not as an afterthought or\u00a0 diversity checklist, but for the true potential it holds in including disability narratives in\u00a0 contemporary art spaces.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Josefien (b. 1994) is a writer and maker, born with Fibular Hemimelia \u2013 a rare congenital disability.\u00a0 Josefien Cornette is an artist and writer with a multidisciplinary practice grounded in art history,\u00a0 feminism, queer studies, and disability studies. In 2023, Josefien published their first book titled \u2018A\u00a0 House Called Pain\u2019<\/i>, in which they write about disability, grief, and the loss of a loved one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The article is supported by the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, and is part of the pARTir initiative funded by the European Union \u2013 NextGenerationEU programme.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s a sunny spring afternoon when I meet Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen (b. 1974) on a\u00a0 video call. In this digital space, a bright, colourful, and sharp-witted disabled woman appears. As\u00a0 a disabled artist myself, I find Jenni-Juulia to be the kind of figure I hope to meet in my lifetime\u2014 someone who feels like a role […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":8413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partir-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8427,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8426\/revisions\/8427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituutit.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}