Disability Arts Online announces dis_place virtual gallery’s first curated exhibition

Disability Arts Online presents I need to be more than a lesson you learned – the first exhibition to be curated for its digital gallery dis_place. Curated by new in-house curator Nathalie Boobis, this free exhibition brings together work by nine artists, including three new commissions. I need to be more than a lesson you learned is a group exhibition that explores embodied disabled experiences of access in relation to ableist approaches to diversity and inclusion.

Exhibiting artists: Abi Palmer, Alt Text Selfie project, Babeworld, Becky Beasley, Bella Milroy, Ezra Benus, Christine Sun Kim, Jamila Prowse and Jo Longhurst.

New commission for permanent, gallery ‘foyer’ artwork: Created by Jordan Whitewood-Neal.

About dis_place

dis_place is an innovative digital gallery space dedicated to removing access barriers to exhibitions while platforming the work of disabled, D/deaf, and / or neurodivergent artists with a focus on intersectionality.

The gallery has been built to offer audiences multiple ways of accessing artworks from anywhere. Visitors can experience exhibitions presented on digital gallery walls and move through different rooms. Each work can be experienced in a detailed view which brings up further information and the opportunity to zoom in closer. There are also multiple accessible versions of both the artworks and written information, including audio description, BSL and easy read overviews.

Disability Arts Online piloted dis_place in 2025, exhibiting a digital adaptation of Towards New Worlds which toured from MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. The gallery officially launches on 25 February 2026 and features a new permanent foyer artwork which is a digital imagining of a fictional accessible gallery building by disabled architectural researcher and designer Jordan Whitewood-Neal.

The inaugural curated exhibition, I need to be more than a lesson you learned includes three newly commissioned works by Babeworld, Abi Palmer and Jamila Prowse which will also form the start of dis_place’s permanent collection. Further touring exhibitions for 2026 will be announced in the coming months.

About I need to be more than a lesson you learned

Running from 25 February 2026 to 31 January 2027, I need to be more than a lesson you learned is a group exhibition that explores embodied disabled experiences of access in relation to ableist approaches to diversity and inclusion. The exhibition features the work of nine artists working across photography, film, sculpture, drawing and text and includes three new commissions. dis_place will be open 24/7.

The title of the exhibition comes from a line in a poem, The lesson, by the US-based queer, crip, poet, Carrie Sarah Kauffman. In the context of this exhibition, it is speaking to the power dynamics of cultural and institutional approaches to diversity and inclusion.

In cases where diversity and inclusion is performed but inaccessibility persists, this can result in a particularly insidious form of ableism. Disabled people are in the room so it appears as if the justice work is done. However, if disabled people demand structural change or expose discrimination, it is rarely acted upon. The result is a cultural resistance to true disability justice and the preservation of a normative status quo.

Diversity and inclusion approaches act as veneers for radical, collective, interdependent access, which could benefit all bodies. Through the selection of works in I need to be more than a lesson you learned, the exhibition centres disability-led embodiment. It exposes ableist cracks and plants seeds of intimacy, disabled joy and interdependence to take root within them.

The artists

The art historical trope of the readymade is used in Bella Milroy and Ezra Benus’ sculptural works to transfigure, respectively, envelopes from the Department for Work and Pensions, vintage bedpans and tourniquets.

The photographic lens in the work of Jo Longhurst and Becky Beasley is directed towards non-human subjects to convey the potency of what is suppressed.

Christine Sun Kim and Babeworld use fanged humour to draw attention to their own experiences of the failings in access in social and institutional contexts, including the art world.

Abi Palmer, Jamila Prowse and the Alt Text Selfie project use the barriers they face as material for exploring the generative potential in creatively navigating them.

Unmasked and unselfconscious, the artworks in I need to be more than a lesson you learned trouble and supplant imposed and ableist ideas of disability. Collectively, they present a disabled-led discourse on embodied experiences of diversity and inclusion, and assert a collective version of access that is restful, intimate, joyful, erotic and interdependent.

Over three virtual rooms, the exhibition features films, drawings, photographs, sculptures, and text and sound works which visitors can also experience in a variety of other ways. There will be BSL interpretation and audio versions of exhibition texts, along with easy read overviews and audio descriptions of each of the artworks.

The launch event on 25 February will include a curator-led tour of the exhibition, a roundtable discussion with exhibiting artists, and a conversation with Jordan Whitewood-Neal. Further details of the public programme to accompany ‘I need to be more than a lesson you learned’ will come out later in the year.

Disability Arts Online curator Boobis said:

The idea behind this exhibition is something I have been working on for some time and stems from my personal experiences, particularly in the art world. I have often found that there is a veneer of inclusivity, access and care that is spoken about in programming and touted in funding bids and evaluations as ‘diversity and inclusion’.

However, the reality is that there is a persistent failure to deliver on these and often this is due to the overarching structures and systems of our society that mean true access is too costly, too bureaucratic, or too under-resourced to implement. To quote Mia Mingus on their blog Leaving Evidence: ‘Just because disabled people are in the room doesn’t mean there is no ableism’.

While this might be conceived as a negative starting point for an exhibition, my intention is that it acts more as a provocation to explore what is possible when access is authored horizontally and not imposed.

All of the artists’ work has so much softness and energy; works confront ableism but also assert tenderness, intimacy and joy. I have learned a lot through working with everyone to put this together. My intention is that as an exhibition it really centres all that a disabled future can bring, for everyone.

Visit dis_place here.

Featured image of ‘Spoons After Carolyn Lazard’ by Jamila Prowse via Disability Arts Online