Tucson Artist Wins Award, Will Tour With National Exhibition

TUCSON, AZ — A Tucson 22-year-old will be among a group of artists to tour nationally after their pieces were chosen by an international organization on arts and disability.

The 2021 VSA Emerging Artists Competition, run by the Kennedy Center, selected the work of 15 young artists (ages 16 to 27) with disabilities to feature on the tour.

Officials also chose winners of the contest, and Panteha Abareshi, 22, of Tucson, took first prize.

Abareshi's piece, titled "Methods of Care for the Precarious Body," explores "their existence as a chronically ill/disabled body with multiple medical illnesses and resulting disabilities, at the root of which is sickle cell zero beta thalassemia," officials said in a news release.

Sickle cell zero beta thalassemia is genetic blood disorder that causes debilitating pain and body deterioration that increases with age, officials said.

"Through this work Abareshi discusses the complexities of living within a body that is highly monitored, constantly examined, and made to feel like a specimen," officials said. "Abareshi aims to make the viewer hyperaware of their own body, and actively employ accessibility as a tool, both withholding and over-extending it as a means of casting light onto the ill/disabled experience."

Through their work, Abareshi aims to disrupt and appropriate traditional ideas of identity, illness and disability, so that a "diseased, malfunctioning and othered body" is seen as fundamentally human, rather than "natural" or "unnatural."

Abareshi's piece — which earned them a $10,000 prize — adhered to the theme of the exhibition, "Merge," which invited artists to create work that explores uniting paths.

The call asked artists to consider the ways their creative process and disability identity intersect and combine, officials said.

Abareshi and the other artists chosen will visit three to five sites between now and the end of 2022. The tour will kick off in Washington, D.C. in January 2022 at the Volkswagen Headquarters, as the Volkswagen Group of America is presenting it, officials said.

"These young artists challenge us to see the world through their lived experiences with disabilities," Betty Siegel, Director of VSA and Accessibility of the Kennedy Center, said. "Their work sparks dialogue and examination of who we are and, hopefully, will ignite understanding around creative and identity."