Concrete Captions: Texting Rights

Kirsty Collins

30 January - 22 February 2026, Platform
Exhibition opening: 6pm Thursday 29 January 2026

Concrete Captions: Texting Rights shows how texting and social media empower Deaf and disability culture, shift attitudes about burdens, and challenge outdated views. During the pandemic, a renaissance of collective action, mutual aid, and new ways of thinking emerged. Inspired by my experiences with netspeak, my artwork celebrates the strength and beauty of Deaf and disability cultures.

In the Craptioning Experience, a live captioning interactive experience, humour and creativity are used to test lip-reading skills and connect audiences with the lived experience of the Deaf and hard-of-hearing.

The texts in this ceramics and technology exhibition question propaganda that frames disabled people as burdens, overlooking destruction wrought by billionaires and politicians. While media reports blame us for wasting public funds, and accommodations are withheld, disability victim-blaming and ableism are society’s fear and shame. We are made to carry the burden.

If we continue to see disability in isolation rather than as an intersectional and connecting part of everyone and everything in life and art, we overlook its creative, revolutionary power. Essentially, Deaf gain and disability intersectional insight equips us with transformative, creative power to reimagine bodies and values through art.

Image: Kirsty Collins, #DeafAF. Photograph by Simon Hewson.