Skip to content

Community As Home – Portraits

Graphic with a white background featuring an illustrated portrait of Alice Wong and Ashanti Fortson by Ashanti, with a purple, pink, mauve, and blue color palette. Wong is an Asian American woman wearing a dark blue jacket and a pink-and-lavender chevron-patterned scarf, as well as a mask over her nose with a tube for her Bi-Pap machine. Fortson is an Afro-Mexican person wearing light yellow star earrings, large and round pink glasses, and a dark blue knit shawl with accents in bright pink. Clouds swirl in front of the figures, and stars are visible in the night sky behind them. Shooting stars with bright pink trails are scattered throughout the portrait. Near the bottom of the image, embellished text reads “Alice and Ashanti,” and the text “#CommunityAsHome” is underneath.
Graphic with a white background featuring an illustrated portrait of Alice Wong and Ashanti Fortson by Ashanti, with a purple, pink, mauve, and blue color palette. Wong is an Asian American woman wearing a dark blue jacket and a pink-and-lavender chevron-patterned scarf, as well as a mask over her nose with a tube for her Bi-Pap machine. Fortson is an Afro-Mexican person wearing light yellow star earrings, large and round pink glasses, and a dark blue knit shawl with accents in bright pink. Clouds swirl in front of the figures, and stars are visible in the night sky behind them. Shooting stars with bright pink trails are scattered throughout the portrait. Near the bottom of the image, embellished text reads “Alice and Ashanti,” and the text “#CommunityAsHome” is underneath.

In 2020 artist Ashanti Fortson and Alice Wong collaborated in a project called Community As Home featuring a series digital portraits centered on the joy, culture, and love of disabled people and how we create communities and homes for one another. We asked participants a number of questions:

  • What is the power of finding community?
  • Who are your communities and cultural homes?
  • How do you find and sustain community?
  • What does it mean to belong as a disabled person in society?
  • How do you see yourself in relation to the world around you?
  • What is the beauty and joy of finding and being with ‘your people’?

You can find all 14 digital portraits by Ashanti Fortson here: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/community-as-home-portraits/

For more about Ashanti’s beautiful work:

https://www.ashantifortson.com/

Note on attribution: these images are free for anyone to share and use but you must credit Ashanti Fortson as the artist and whenever possible link back to this page listed above.

 

Support Disability Media and Culture

DONATE to the Disability Visibility Project®

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: