Alison Lapper

http://www.alisonlapper.com/

Alison Lapper is an artist - mouth-painter, photographer and sculptress.

"After graduating from Brighton University with a degree in art, I began creating a body of work which deals with the themes of beauty and disability. Can disability be beautiful? Can it evoke more than revulsion, pity or sympathy? I am showing that it can, that there is beauty in everything."

"My work questions notions of physical normality and beauty, in a society that considers me to be deformed because I was born without arms. In my photographic work, I use light and shadow to create images with a sculptural quality reminiscent of classical statues. A particular influence has been the Venus de Milo, who is admired as one of the great classic beauties, despite having lost her own arms. My final year degree show installation, included photographs of myself as a child wearing artificial limbs and concluded in a self-portrait, posed as the Venus deMilo. This – one of my best known works – was re-exhibited at London's Photographer's Gallery in a Millennium Exhibition."





Three documentaries "Alison's Baby" , "Alison and Parys" and one currently in production "The Real Venus" are unfolding her life before, during and after the birth of her son Parys.





Alison Lapper's statue “Alison Lapper Pregnant”, on display in Trafalgar Square until 2007, caused some controversy as to been Pregnant and disabled in public, even though Tragalgar Square and its public were acquainted with disability aesthetics. Horatio Nelson's column was erected there between 1840 and 1843c and his statue was sculpted with most of his right arm amputated as he was hit by a musket-ball and fractured his humerus bone in multiple places at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
As he is a national hero it is more justifiable to be (disabled) on display!

Nelson's column