Universal, adaptable, wearable, vulnerable
“On Display Harvard,” an hourlong performance undertaken by Harvard students, staff, and community members, captures the audience’s attention in the Calderwood Courtyard at the Harvard Art Museums.
Photos by Grace DuVal
Universal, adaptable, wearable, vulnerable
‘On Display Harvard’ uses performance, zip ties, to bring attention to the UN’s International Day of Persons With Disabilities
As you walk past the columns of the Harvard Art Museums and step into the bright light of Calderwood Courtyard, you see a group of 16 people dressed in white. They are arranged in various positions, some standing, some sitting, some using wheelchairs or crutches. They all are wearing garments made of zip ties — plastic spikes protruding at different angles. The forms drape around each performer’s arms, shoulders, legs. The only sounds to break the silence are the low murmurs from visitors who wend between the performers, watching intently, photographing, taking video. Moment by moment the performer’s movements change, gentle shifts in their body, each gesture intuitively executed slowly and thoughtfully.
The scene you are witnessing is “On Display Harvard,” a durational performance installation presented by the Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA) Dance Program. A mix of Harvard staff, students, and community members come together each year on Dec. 3 as part of “On Display Harvard,” an annual commemoration of the United Nations’ International Day of Persons With Disabilities. This worldwide social justice initiative, created by physically integrated dance company Heidi Latsky Dance, brings together performers across the spectrum of abilities, ages, sizes, and races, into a singular space.
Founded in 2015, the durational performances of “On Display Harvard” create living sculpture parks that the audience is invited to wander through, viewing each performer up close.
“By exposing the general public to our widely diverse sculpture courts, we are expanding what inclusion looks like,” states the “On Display” website.
The sculptural garments worn during this year’s “On Display Harvard” were created by Harvard Graduate School of Design ’24 alumni Pin Sangkaeo and Benson Joseph, collectively known as (snobs._). Collaborators since they met at the School of Architecture at Syracuse University, for the past three years (snobs._) has created one-of-a-kind wearables for “On Display Harvard.” On its statement, (snobs._) explained that to build the garments for each performer “you have to create something that is universal, but at the same time has the capability to be adaptable. Zip ties are the way that we did the wearables. We pre-model a series of implied poses and where they can be put, and then we lay the pictures out on the wall, and we let [the performers] pick and … we modify it to fit the person better. It’s like sketching at full scale.”
Using more than 8,000 zip ties and taking more than a year and a half to complete, the wearables are part of an ongoing, ever-evolving project for (snobs._). Collaborating with the performers of “On Display” allows the creative team to see and understand their work more profoundly. After the event the performers and designers sat together in the greenroom sharing their performance experiences.
“The feedback is the most important part. There’s a validation that comes in when other people offer all the insights of things that maybe you weren’t thinking about … it’s not possible to do that kind of work without feedback,” noted (snobs._).