Goldsmiths CCA to Host 'Flare-Up' Exhibition Exploring Illness and Disability

Goldsmiths CCA will open 'Flare-Up', an exhibition dedicated to exploring the poetics and aesthetics of illness, disability, neurodivergence, and Deafness. Running from May 21 to August 16, 2026, the exhibition features a multi-disciplinary approach to these themes.

The exhibition delves into a range of interconnected topics, including activism, transcendence, mourning, joy, and care, alongside critical discussions on exclusion, alienation, and structural conditions of illness. It examines how public health, poverty, and religious narratives intersect with lived experiences, challenging ableism and state control. Themes of fluidity, transformation, collectivity, and resistance are also central to the presentation.

'Flare-Up' brings together works by Angela de la Cruz, Abi Palmer, Avril Corroon, Bella Milroy, Benoît Piéron, Carolyn Lazard, Christine Sun Kim, Derek Jarman, Félix González-Torres, Freestylers, Jamila Prowse, Jesse Darling, JJJJJerome Ellis, Leah Clements, Lizzy Rose, RA Walden, and Rachael Crowther. The exhibited mediums span sculpture, installation, painting, film, poetry, music, performance, drawings, and sound. Concepts such as crip identity, queer thought, feminist thought, crip time, and HIV/AIDS art and activism are explored through abstraction, opacity, and crip aesthetics.

The public opening for 'Flare-Up' is scheduled for Wednesday, May 20, from 6-9pm, with a quiet opening preceding it from 5-6pm.