(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
American Judith Scott (1943 – 2005) is one of the biggest names in feminist art. Last year, the profiled Brooklyn Museum had a large retrospective exhibition with her, and the art market has in recent years priced her work ever higher. She is referred to as a central source of inspiration for artists who are concerned with textiles, soft materials and found objects. Her works consist of threads, textiles, plastic tubes, ropes and yarns that are tied around and around in intricate shapes and patterns.
Judith Scott's works you really shouldn't have seen. When she was born, children like her were given a life expectancy of thirteen years in the United States. According to her family, the explanation for her unusual appearance and special behavior was believed to be inherited. Somewhere in Judith's family tree, a person of Mongolian origin had spread poor genetic material into the family.
Mongolian idiots, you called these kids. They were sent to an institution pending an early death. They were a shame to the family. They were non-individuals. However, Judith's family made two breaches when they left her at the institution. The first was that they did not cut contact with her. The other was that they did not sign the papers where they were obliged to surrender her to public care. The family maintained contact, demanded care, and expected good care. The daughter survived and lived well.
Some years after Judith was moved from her home in 1959, it became known that there was too much chromosome that gave the Mongoloid their peculiarities. Six years later, the World Health Organization changed its name to Down syndrome. The reason for this was that the Mongolian authorities found the old term derogatory to the nation's pride.
Genetic minority. At the same time, the new knowledge of the disease removed the guilt of the mothers. Until the extra chromosome became widely known, it was common for mothers to be blamed for these children's peculiarities, which further increased the shame.
With the knowledge of the extra chromosome, people with Downs were gradually re-categorized into a genetic minority. With minority status, the struggle for rights grew. Especially in Judith Scott's homeland of the United States, the struggle of the disabled and the disabled in the 1970s was equated with gay, feminist and racism.
It is against this backdrop that we must see that Judith from the late 1980s gained access to paintings, and later textiles and thread: Now one should not only keep alive those with Downs, but one should also give them a life.
Through the works, Judith communicated an inner life and a visual gaze that has gone straight into the art canon. She worked with materials-based art for 18 years before passing away at the age of 62. Judith thus lived almost 50 years longer than her parents envisioned, and she left behind an art that continues to grow in value, both economically and historically.
An error that can be removed. Modern society has always cleaned up by placing deviants in their own homes. As part of the institutionalization, deviants are categorized. In the 1950s, Judith was an idiot who was hidden away; from the 1980s onwards, Judith was treated as a member of a cultural minority that deserved and demanded the right to a meaningful existence and artistic expression.
Today, Downs as a minority category is slowly being wiped out. We are in the process of recategorizing Downs once again. This time, it is the last couple of decades' renewed belief in science, genetics and microbiology as the solution to all cultural and societal problems that is initiating change. This time, the Downs people are recategorized from being members of a minority, to becoming holders of a chromosome defect that can be detected before birth, so that the fetus and the defect can be removed.
Modern society has always cleaned up by placing deviants in institutions.
The road has gone slowly from a situation where Downs was a dirty genetic infection from Mongolia that was removed from society by institutionalization – to a chromosomal abnormality that can be found in the mother's womb and removed once and for all. In between these two extremes there were a few decades of thaw, where those with Downs were treated as a minority. It was luck for art that Judith Scott managed to live exactly those years.
