BIOGRAPHY
Emily Sara is a queer, disabled, neurodivergent, artist, designer, writer, and alt educator. She is an inaugural member of the Eames Institute’s 2025 Curious 100 and, in 2024, was named a Disability Futures Fellow through the Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and United States Artists.
Emily’s studio practice spans a spectrum of media and mediums, centering critiques of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) while also fostering support and mutual aid among disabled creatives. She is the founder of cripple—a publishing initiative dedicated to supporting disabled artists and designers.
Cripple functions as a digital, multi-modal archive, that hosts short documentaries, live and recorded events by disabled creatives, and a collection of disabled history intermixed with contemporary and intersectional forms of support. Cripple offers entirely free online classes, including Fine We’ll Just 3D Print Our Own Wheelchairs (And Other Mobility Devices). Emily believes in a non-linear publishing model—an adaptable approach to creating and distributing critical, often experimental work that challenges traditional educational structures.
In 2023, Emily coined Stim Aesthetics, a framework that expands on Disability Aesthetics (Siebers, 2010) by centering neurodivergent influence in contemporary art. Her work has been featured or supported by institutions including Boston Art Review, Carnegie Museum of Art, Currier Museum of Art, Hyperallergic, ICA LA, MoMA, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Yale School of Art, and many others.
Alongside her creative practice, Emily is also applying for a service dog, going to too-many-but-necessary doctors appointments, searching for a wheelchair-accessible van, attempting to keep her chronic pain at 7 out of 10 or lower, and staying alive.
For an up-to-date CV, please contact studio@cripple.info.
