Born in 1981, Carmen Papalia is a nonvisual social practice artist with chronic and episodic pain. He uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, art institutions and visual culture. As a convener, he establishes welcoming spaces where disabled, sick and chronically ill people can build capacity for care that they lack on account of governmental failure and medical ableism. His work, which takes forms ranging from collaborative performance to public intervention, is a response to the harms of the Medical Model of Disability.

Papalia holds a Bachelor of Arts from Simon Fraser University and a Master of Fine Arts with a focus in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University.

He is an inaugural fellow of the Crip Tech Incubator via Leonardo: the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. In 2020 Papalia was one of 25 artists who received the Sobey Art Award; in 2019 he was a Sobey long list recipient in the West Coast / Yukon region. His work has been featured at institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Liverpool, Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, the Contemporary Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery and Gallery Gachet, among others.

Headshot, image credit: Kristin Lantz