Zoe Cinel and Kym McDaniel on Care, Curation, and Disability in Creative Practice
Rest With Me, 2023
8’x3’x2’
Zoe Cinel’s fabric sculptures made from repurposed fabric, pillows, hospital mattress, cyanotype patches and quotes from her series Conversations About Care. Displayed in a window seat at Second Shift Studio in St. Paul, MN.
All the materials were donated by friends and community members.
Collaborator: Gretchen Gasterland-Gustaffson
Zoe Cinel and Kym McDaniel discuss care, curation, shared knowledge, and disability representation in their art and creative practice. This interview took place in 2023 and was recently updated. The artists reflect on their projects at the time: Cinel’s Chronicles of the Chronic, Less is Enough and Conversations about Care, as well as McDaniel’s films Invisible World and a work-in-progress trilogy. The artist’s bios and upcoming events are included at the bottom of this article. You can follow Zoe Cinel on Instagram at @zcinel and Kym McDaniel at @kymcdaniel. More information can be found on their websites: www.kymmcdaniel.com and www.cinelzoe.myportfolio.com
Chloe Cetinkaya: Hi Zoe and Kym! Thanks for taking the time to chat with me today. My intention for this interview is to facilitate a conversation between you about the role disability plays in your creative practices and bodies of work.
My hope for this interview is to reach disabled and able-bodied audiences who maybe can relate or find it thought provoking to hear how you two are navigating disability in your work.
With that said, I’d like this to be a space where neither of you to feel a need to explain your work as if you're explaining it to somebody who doesn't know anything about disability. I want this to be a generative conversation for both of you.
So, maybe we could start by talking about your most recent projects?
Zoe Cinel: Well, thank you for bringing us together. And thank you, for you know, being mindful about not having to explain. I appreciate that introduction.
Yeah, my most recent project. I have worked on two projects. I'm going to talk a little bit about both.
One is a curatorial project for the Rochester Center, Chronicles of the Chronic. It's a group exhibition about chronic pain. It’s not addressing disabilities directly, but when you have chronic pain, it can be a disability because pain doesn’t allow you to do certain things. I invited a few artists, including Kym, who live with chronic pain and whose work is informed by it and directly speaks about this experience. Other artists were selected through a juried process by curators who are also living with chronic pain and by a medical professional. Dr. Victor Montori wrote a book called, Why We Revolt, and it's about how the healthcare system fails patients in caregiving and why. By inviting his perspective on the show and creating programming that put artists and medical professionals in conversation, Chronicles of the Chronic tried to generate shared perspective and mend historical trauma.
Chronicles of the Chronic, 2023-2024
Curated group exhibition.
Main Gallery West, Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN
A video screen is mounted on a white wall with two sets of headphones hanging beside it. The screen shows a coiled red extension cord placed on a wooden floor. White subtitles on the screen read: "My body will find its way out somehow." To the right of the screen is a holder with informational brochures about the installation.
Care is a big topic and I'm broadly interested in it: caregiving, caretaking and all that is in between from a personal and professional perspective. The word “curator” from Latin means “to care for something”. Learning about this, I wondered: how much does producing art and an exhibition cost the artist, the curator and museum staff in terms of labor, time, health? How is the audience and the institution involved in all of this?
The second project is a solo exhibition of my artworks at Second Shift Studio. In 2022-2023 I had a year-long residency at Second Shift in St. Paul and this exhibition is a culmination of what I experienced, learned and created during the year-long residency. It's called, Less is Enough.
I've been trying to accept my identity as a chronically sick person. When I started the residency, I was not doing great physically. I was in a lot of pain, fatigue, probably a flare from Rheumatoid Arthritis. After getting this great residency opportunity for time and space to dedicate to my practice it was frustrating to not be well enough to be as “productive” as I wanted. I had to re-think my conception of what productivity is and how to adapt my artistic practice to be sustainable for my body. I used to make big installations because I like the process, the labor and creating an immersive space. I used to crave for a project that exhausts you, that exhausts your body, and that fully takes over your routine. But I can't do that anymore. There's no point in putting my body through that.
I started asking myself, how do I find joy in a new process and revise my expectations on what kind of art I should create? Can I make something little, uncomplicated, less laborious? How to be proud, fulfilled and present in that kind of work? During this residency I created new work that was soft, like a series of hand-made heating pads. Also, I learned to sew a little bit. I'm excited about how all of this will evolve.
Kym McDaniel: I love hearing about what you're doing, Zoe, and that question, how can I be okay with this being what it is? That’s something I struggle with. I have this idea that my film could always be “better”. Or, the film has to be “good enough” to get programmed. Those ideas intersect a lot with capitalism and what is deemed as worthy or “useful” in our society.
I’ll also talk about two projects. The first is a film that I finished at the end of December 2022 called Invisible World. I started recording my doctor’s appointments because last fall I had a gynecologist who didn’t want to take my IUD out and it felt like malpractice.
Invisible World (Video, 4:39min, 2023), video still
An underground parking structure that is utilitarian and stark, with structural pillars painted yellow at the base and signs indicating accessible or Crip parking spaces. There’s a single black car in motion, turning into the garage. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling provide cold, harsh illumination, and the concrete walls and pillars give a sense of institutional space. Overlaid at the bottom is a subtitle that reads: “K: I had my, my different medical records sent here.”
So, when I moved to Utah, I went to the doctor mainly because I wanted to get an accessible placard for my car. I had one when I was living in New York, but when I got my license plate in Utah, I needed a new one. I was glad I recorded the appointment because the doctor (in Utah) wasn't going to give me the placard if I didn't have an oxygen tank, if I didn't use a wheelchair, or if she couldn't see what was “wrong” with me. She grilled me about my health to the point that I started crying during the appointment and it was really inappropriate.
I am getting my certificate in Disability Studies from the CUNY (City University of New York) and the course I was in required a narrative project at the end of the semester. So, I made a film for that class using the audio recording of the doctor’s appointment and videos of empty accessible parking spots all around Utah.
It's been interesting to me because I've submitted the film to festivals but since it is a film that I made for a course, it feels like not a “real” film to me. I spent three months on it, which is a short time for me, and there's something about it that feels “lazy”. At the same time, I believe in the film.
Maybe I won't talk about my other film, because I talked a long time about this one.
ZC: It's up to you. If you want to talk about the other film, I’m ok with it.
KM: I'll just say briefly. I've been working on this trilogy of films. You’re both familiar with my Exit Strategies. I like working in a series because it feels like chapters and I don't feel pressured to fit everything in one thing. So, I’ve been working on this trilogy of films and, it kind of goes back to what Zoe was saying (about a care ethic); what does a care ethic look like in a queer relationship and also in a relationship where someone has pain and chronic illness?
Trilogy work-in-progress video still
A video still of B, a non-binary person, grooming their fluffy white and black cat, Ellie. Ellie is lying on B’s lap with her back supported. B is using a pair of red-handled scissors to trim the cat’s tangled fur clumps. Ellie looks relatively calm, though her expression suggests she’s not entirely thrilled. B’s shirt is covered in white cat fur, indicating this has been an ongoing grooming session. The setting is an outdoor deck, with horizontal siding in the background and wooden floorboards underfoot.
CC: Thank you both for sharing. Before this interview, Zoe, you sent me a short description of Less is Enough, “While society teaches us that illness is a naturally isolating event and not suited for public conversations, I believe that shared knowledge and healing can strengthen individuals and networks and reconcile ill and well.”
I’m curious about that idea of shared knowledge. I feel like that connects with the community care ethic you both mentioned. When I hear Kym talk about her work, she's recording and sharing a personal lived experience. I'm curious about how you both think about what that shared knowledge is. Sharing knowledge and community care seem deeply connected with activism. It’s a loaded question, but how does community care and shared knowledge play a role in how you’re thinking as you’re making and what's driving your decisions of disclosure or conversation with an audience?
ZC: Conversations about Care were small gatherings with books - I see some of them in your background, Kym, like Golem Girl! These books are mainly written by activists and artists who share radical ideas about what care is and how it’s complicated. Mainly black, native, queer authors. Also doctors who want to challenge and change the medical system.
Conversations About Care, 2022-ongoing
Community events with books, tea, and comfortable seating.
People who attended the Conversations picked books to read for 20-30 minutes in a comfortable setting with couches and tea and heating pads. Then they shared whatever they found. It was literally like, “oh, this is compelling to me, I want to read it out loud!” And then we talked about it. That was the event. As simple as that.
I was initially stressed out about leading the Conversations because I never did anything like that before. I didn't want to seem like an expert on care. I wanted people to participate, hoping people would feel ownership and agency. For example, I encouraged them to do whatever with the book they picked: mark, color, fold pages. Make it their own. Challenge the idea of perfection and care as preservation. Instead embrace care as connection, change, the impact of closeness. It was interesting to see how people mark words in a book. It is a thing we mostly do in private in our own books. You often don’t get to see this aspect of someone’s personality, their strategies and the things that catch their attention. I think learning about other people’s mark-making strategies is a form of knowledge sharing in a way, resistance and care.
After reading, we talked. The participants came from different fields and backgrounds, bringing in their various perspectives. Attendees included nurses, therapists, artists like Benjamin Merrit, whose work was also featured in Chronicles of the Chronic. Ben works as a professional caregiver and he is also an artist living with a chronic illness. To close the experience, I invited people to write down a sentence, some words, or a thought.
These quotes were later printed with cyanotype on patches for the soft sculptures I created for Less is Enough. These sculptures are shaped like big pillows with long arms that hug you. They also have big, soft hands and they are accompanied by a large cushion to sit on. I donated this installation to Second Shift hoping it will be used by future residents. It’s a comfortable space for anyone who needs a soft surface to rest.
Rest With Me #1, 2023
8’x3’x2’
Repurposed fabric, pillows, hospital mattress, cyanotype patches and quotes from Conversations About Care.
All the materials were donated by friends and community members.
Collaborator: Gretchen Gasterland-Gustaffson
A person sits on a dark gray couch with an open book in their lap. Draped around their chest in a hug are two large arms and hands made of fabric with plaid shirt sleeves and corduroy gloves stuffed to look like human limbs. A blue patch with quotes from Conversations About Care is stitched to the elbow.
KM: Yeah, I really enjoy hearing how you led that. I’m coming from a dance background, which is an ethic of overwork, overwork, overwork. A dance ethic is just to overwork yourself until you die and then probably overwork in the afterlife, too.
Hearing about Zoe’s experience curating and bringing people together where there doesn't have to be this “production” of sorts, is so rich and generative to me. I'm constantly trying to reframe my ideas of what a “successful” performance or event is. What if everybody's just laying on the ground for the entire time and there's not this choreographic performance as an expectation? I appreciate hearing about your interventions.
ZC: It’s hard to answer that question of what is enough. I appreciated the open format of Second Shift residency. They had no expectations about me producing a show, or a series of artworks, or showing up to the studio every day or never. It was great and liberating to be relieved from the pressure. It’s rare in the artworld to be welcomed that way, without expectations for performing.
Going back to the question about the ethics of community care, I wonder how much do you give and how much do you take? One of the founders of the residency at Second Shift, her name is Kriss Z. Kriss is a nurse specialized in birth and pregnancy. During the Conversation she attended, we talked about balancing self-care with caregiving. Embracing self-care and practice seems already complicated at least for me. I made a point about needing to prioritize self-care in caregiving and Kriss replied “yeah, but when you’re there and somebody's delivering a baby, you can’t just step out and be like I'm gonna take care of myself. You know, you have to be there, otherwise this woman dies and the baby too. Right?” So, there are some moments in which resilience is required and it has to bypass self-care. It made me think about, how do we give back to people who care professionally? Its complexity. As a patient who has gone through some medical trauma, I hold resentment towards the medical system. But since hearing Kriss, I try to humanize medical professionals, even when they seem uncaring or cold. It helps me to think that they might just be overwhelmed human beings. They might not have been emotionally trained for what they experience on a daily basis. Especially within capitalism, there is no time to pause, rest and reflect on what care is.
KM: My experience is that normally people don’t get interested in disability unless they are disabled themselves or they have experience with a family member who is, especially a child. In Judy Heumann’s autobiography she writes that, and I’m paraphrasing, but “everybody will end up disabled and this is fact”. I said that to a college dance class once and it was like I had said something really outrageous, the students were like, “I can’t believe she said that!”
I know that disability is a fact, but the reaction from the outside is what’s difficult for me. But, I remind myself that my experience in this world and also the education that I’ve done to support my experience is the grounding to come back to. And I try to not let other people's parts and perceptions create doubt in my own self about what I know is true.
ZC: I can relate to what you are saying. While working on Chronicles of the Chronic I was wondering where do people stand between the spectrum of ableism and disability? I believe that there's no distinction, you know, like there is no gender binary. We all have different abilities but everyone has some. We’re placed by society in one kingdom or in the other kingdom to quote Susan Sontag’s, Illness as Metaphor. But I think there's no kingdom. It's like one big square and we can roam around. Everyone catches illness eventually and gets old.
I think the problem here is that there is little representation of that spectrum. But, even if it is hard work to initiate these conversations, I think eventually it will be easier and more common to discuss and share knowledge. People who temporarily are “well” - whatever that means - should understand that there is a lot of wisdom, creative power and joy in illness. It’s a human experience. I think we should be able to say, even in professional settings, I need a pillow or captions, or other tools for access. I bet most people, if they felt encouraged to ask, and if they were aware of the needs of their bodies, would ask for accommodations.
KM: What I was thinking when you were talking was how it begins with the permission to “be”. Like, step one, give permission for people to lay down on the ground during a faculty meeting!
I think there's this larger question of why does our culture and society feel like they need to control people’s behavior, and why do we feel like it's not okay to just lay down when we're in the middle of something that's really arduous? And further, when I do lay down on the ground, people get really worried. They’re like, “Oh my god, you're on the floor! Are you okay?” I feel like a part of me doesn't want to do it (lay down on the floor) as much for the fact that people react so strongly. I think people see somebody laying down on the ground as an emergency situation, which in some cases it is, but in other cases it also shows that it's not okay to rest or act “out of the norm” in public spaces.
Invisible World (Video, 4:39min, 2023), video still
A video still focusing on the lower half of Kym, a light-skinned woman dancing in a parking lot at night. She is wearing red pants, a grey hoodie, and beat up white sneakers. Her stance is expressive—legs spread and one arm bent backwards—mid-gesture. The lighting is strong and directional, casting deep shadows and reflecting off the wet-looking pavement. The yellow diagonal lines on the pavement indicate a “no parking” spot.
ZC: Yeah, I think comfort is just not valued within capitalistic ideas of production. And that is across many fields. Even if art as a space and field allows us to discuss rest, accessibility and comfort, let’s be aware that the artworld is also inserted into capitalist modes of production. Artists are expected to create new work, apply to grants, present, perform, in order to fit into categories of success. It would be radical to reform the system and place care and rest at the center of education, artists’ individual practices and institutional practices.
One thing I want to hear your thoughts on, Kym, is trauma and how it could be rooted in ancestry, history and family ties. I know my maternal grandmother also has Rheumatoid Arthritis, just like me. The illness skipped a generation but I wonder if it originated from the trauma of grandmother living through the Second World War. A war is conceptually similar to how autoimmune diseases work: people attacking other people, cells attacking their own system. Complete madness and chaos. The difference between my grandmother and myself is that I have access to medication that keeps the RA in check for the most part. She didn’t and her illness was visible through her deformed hands. I remember how leathery her hands were and how they never stretched open when she caressed my face as a kid. At that time I thought it was strange and I know I can imagine the amount of pain she must have endured as her bones changed structure permanently and endlessly. My illness is mostly invisible and manifests in joints during a flare as red, swollen skin, or more generally as fatigue, pain and depression.
Zoe Cinel, Self-portrait with flare, 2023.
5’x5’x10’
Multimedia installation with x-rays of the artist’s body, found footage, family photos, storytelling, soft sculpture, red lights.
A sculptural installation is illuminated in red-orange light. In the center, a tall, gnarled pillar stands upright, its surface pocked with dark red elements. The sculpture is encircled at its base by a glowing triangle made of bright neon tubes, casting intense light onto the wooden floor. Behind the pillar, a screen displays a close-up of a fisted hand pixelated in red, reaching up through what looks like flames, lava, or liquid.
KM: Yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot that I could say. My experience with the medical system is that if they can't see pain on a diagnostic, they're done helping you. Even though I'm in pain, even though there are symptoms, my life is impacted and I have impairments - they don't care if they can't see it. The medical industry just doesn't want to believe you if they can't see it. Or, they think that diagnostics are “truth”, when, for me, chronic pain goes beyond science. Trauma is spiritual as much as it is scientific, and is emotional as much as it is physical.
This was my final semester in the Disability Studies certificate program and I was in a disability and the health professions class. It was really eye opening to learn how little doctors, physicians, nurses, and physical therapists learn about disability! Maybe they'll have a day-long intensive about access, if anything.
In the course, we watched videos where people with visible disabilities were in medical residencies and promoting their programs. My reflection was that it’s important to have representation in the medical field for people with physical disabilities. At the same time, I still don’t see my experience in that. As a person with a non-visible disability, I would never be able to work a 12 hour shift, even once a week. I was also reflecting on the trauma and mental illness that occurs in medical residencies. So when we're thinking about, where does this all start - going back into our own personal histories, and then also thinking about how the systems that are supposed to be training people how to “care” for one another aren’t caring to begin with.
When addressing trauma in my own work, there's this conflict I have with care and disclosure. Three years ago, I read this book, Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors by Janina Fisher, and it changed my life and practice. There's an argument in the book that you don't have to tell your story in order to heal, and that telling your story can actually do more damage. This concept really shook me because my whole work up to that point had been rooted in telling stories about trauma in the effort of healing. I think that in modern day psychotherapy, a lot of therapists and clients still believe this almost, psychoanalytic approach to healing. Right now in my work, I’m asking, how do I relay the impact of what's happened to me, while also not re-traumatizing myself?
This concept was important when I was making Invisible World because I didn't want to go through the appointment again, even by listening to the recording. I had my partner listen to it and then relay the conversation out loud to me so that I could transcribe it. Once I transcribed it, then the experience felt less alive.
I've started trigger-warning my films for “memory recall”, which is a term I’ve created. The idea is rooted in Internal Family Systems theory and the trauma research of Richard Schwartz, Janina Fischer, and Pat Ogden. Trigger warning a film with “memory recall” means you're going to hear somebody talk about something that's harmed them from the past, and that might trigger a part of you that is also stuck in the past.
At the same time, it is complicated because we are always informed by the past, and learning from the past can be transformational. Would #MeToo have ever happened if people didn't speak from the past? If women didn’t disclose what happened to them? Was #MeToo triggering?
ZC: It's just not linear because there's not a manual for it; nobody's teaching it, it's just a bunch of unlearning and trying out stuff, right? In the end, it's just the gift of trying to be kind to each other or yourself or something. It's hard. But yeah, I think you've brought up so many good things.
CC: Well, thank you for taking the time to meet with me and just chat and be here.
KM: Yeah, I feel like it's really rare to have conversations like this and I'm really grateful for it because it reminds me that I'm not alone.
ZC: I think what you did here was like taking off the fatigue of having to start a conversation with someone, though we have already met and we can do it, right? But, you provided the space and thank you for that. That was so great. How you framed it in a way that just made it so easy to, I don't know. Thank you, it feels really good.
CC: You’re welcome!
Zoe, sits in their living room looking into a computer screen. The left side of their face, neck and shoulder is distorted by glitch. The lights are dim in the gray room, a dark blue chair and white banister are in the background. Their blonde highlighted hair is pulled back and they’re wearing a black sweater with white and yellow stipes down the length of their shoulders and arms.
Zoe Cinel
Website: www.cinelzoe.myportfolio.com
Instagram: @zcinel
I am a conceptual artist, curator, and educator from a Mediterranean culture currently based on Mni Sota Makoce, homeland of the Dakota, the Anishinaabe and indigenous people from other Native nations. Through art, I build community around human experiences that are isolating and complex to navigate working collaboratively to produce social change. In the studio (and in community), I research nonbinary, interconnected, and interdisciplinary ways of healing and care.
Since 2017, I have contributed to CarryOn Homes, an artistic collective dedicated to centering stories of immigration to Minnesota. More recently, I have collaborated with Amplify MN: A Disability Justice Collective on The Art of Disability Justice Now, an exhibition rooted in principles of disability justice. In 2023-2024 I curated Chronicles of the Chronic, an exhibition of contemporary artworks that celebrated the disabled/chronically ill community, while also fostering a dialogue among medical professionals and artists/patients.
I have received notable awards, including a 2024 - 2025 MCAD Jerome Fellowship, a 2023-2024 University of Minnesota Liberal Arts Hub Residency with the collaborative project Sound Stories, an MRAC Arts Impact for Individual Grant to support the event series Conversations about Care, a residency with Second Shift Studio (2022-2023), and more. My artistic and curatorial work has been exhibited at institutions such the Walker Art Center, Mana Contemporary Chicago, the Rochester Art Center, the Gordon Parks Gallery, among others.
In 2015 I graduated from ISIA Florence with a BFA in Industrial Design and I hold a master’s in visual studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I have taught at Carleton College, Metropolitan State University, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I am the Curator at the Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN.
Current/Upcoming projects:
Solo exhibition Earth Odyssey, at the Gordon Parks Gallery at the Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, MN. October show 30th - December 4th, 2025. Info: https://www.metrostate.edu/arts/gordon-parks-gallery
Extraordinary Elsewhere, curatedgroup exhibition at the Rochester Art Center, Rochester, MN. Running until February 1st, 2026. Info: www.rochesterartcenter.org/exhibition/extraordinary-elsewhere
A black-and-white Super 8 image with grain. A woman, Kym, is holding a Super 8 camera up to her face, a small smile peaking out from behind the camera. She has long dark hair with daylight streaming in from a window in the room. A window with bare trees are visible behind her.
Kym McDaniel
Website: www.kymmcdaniel.com
Instagram: @kymcdaniel
I am an interdisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, choreographer, curator, and educator. I began filmmaking after a head injury changed my relationship to time, my body, and dance. As a queer femme and invisibly disabled artist, I exist between constructed worlds of the able/disabled, healthy/sick, straight/gay, and movement/stasis. I use the camera to negotiate my internal experience with the external world.
My films have recently screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Slamdance, Experiments in Cinema, Antimatter, Superfest Disability Film Festival, and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, among others. I have been awarded grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Mary L. Nohl Greater Milwaukee Foundation. In 2023-2024, I was an Artist in Residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, UT).
I have a Master of Fine Arts in Cinematic Arts from the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 2023, I graduated with an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from the City University of New York. I also hold an American Society for the Alexander Technique Certification, with research interests in hypermobility and Internal Family Systems.
I am an Assistant Professor in Dance Film & Digital Technologies within the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University. I live on the unceded territory of the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe, and Cherokee peoples.
Current/Upcoming projects:
This summer, I presented my research on "memory recall" at the International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Imagining Ways to Move Beyond a Traumatic Past in Nice, France. My two films, a story that doesn't have to do with me and Document With No End are playing at Beaconsfield Gallery in London, curated by A.L. Steiner. I have two chapters in-progress, ACTING QUEERLY: Creative Collaboration in Applied Bioarchaeology (Applied Bioarchaeology, Springer) and The Camera and My Neck: The Choreography of Chronic Pain (Oxford Handbook of Dance and Disability, Oxford University Press). In Spring 2026, I will be in-residence at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland to continue working on a film I started at Greywood Arts Creative Hub & Residency in Fall 2023.
