Mandi Stewart is a disabled Artist who works between St. Ives and London. She became an Artist after a long career working with disabled people. Her practice is multidisciplinary and responds to her personal experiences as a disabled woman and her involvement with the disability arts movement. Whilst studying at the RCA Mandi has focussed on printmaking and developing work which responds to disability politics. She has taken inspiration from disability activist slogans such as ‘Nothing about Us Without Us’ and ‘Piss on Pity’. Mandi is currently Chair and one of the founder members of the RCA Disabled Students Network. This role involves managing the @rca_dsn Instagram account which provides essential peer support and has also developed her practice.
Her work also responds to her personal experience of her body altered and changed through surgery and society’s response to this. She seeks to challenge the discrimination that disabled people and artists experience every day. Mandi uses circle and strand motifs alongside prose and text to explore these ideas further. Her photographic work responds to her own mental health and the therapeutic experience of capturing a calming photographic image and controlling breath.
