In the Loop: Sandie Yi

Crip Couture and Fashion Justice

Sandie Yi, the artist behind Crip Couture will share a series of body adornments made for disabled women who use art and conversations collaboratively to generate narratives about sexuality, bodily comforts, and disability identity. Her presentation explores about how creating a counternarrative centering a feminist fashion, what Sandie calls “Crip Couture,” is an act of activism. She will also discuss how her work facilitates a public forum, engaging the viewer in intentional looking and reinventing the meanings of disabled women’s bodies.

About Sandie

Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi received a BFA and MA in art therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of California–Berkeley. She has exhibited in various cities in North America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Her artwork was on the book cover and her article in the edited book Materials & Media in Art Therapy: Critical Understandings of Diverse Artistic Vocabularies. In 2013, her artwork was the book cover for the Korean version of The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. She is currently a PhD student in disability studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.