freewheeling

Artist Sue Austin has used a wheelchair since 1996. Instead of allowing her circumstances to hinder her art, she uses it as a vehicle — so to speak.

Austin has created, with the support of diving experts, an underwater wheelchair outfitted with a propeller and fins that allow her to steer. With it, she gracefully hovers through the deep ocean, mingling with fish and flying past coral reefs. The wheelchair is equipped with a clear fin, making the artificial device seem slightly less out of place in the serene ocean.

On her website, Austin discusses how she uses her art to challenge the perception of wheelchairs and disabilities:

“My studio practice has, for sometime, centered around finding ways to understand and represent my embodied experience as a wheelchair user, opening up profound issues about methods of self-representation and the power of self-narration in challenging the nexus of power and control that created the ‘disabled’ as other.”