Bibliographic Reference

In this essay, I argue that the oeuvre of German artist Rebecca Horn’s cockfeathers, fans, and arm/leg/shoulder and head extensions, and much of her artistic and epistemological reach, is more capacious and commodious than we have previously given it credit for. Even though we understand that Horn’s experiences with illness and disability intuitively and profoundly shaped her approach to her artmaking and to the objects she produced, there is little other scholarship on how her work is connected to disability studies and disability aesthetics. This essay seeks to show how these qualities of her work can be articulated within this new framework. In turn, this generative alternative reading of Horn’s work contributes to critical new discourse within the flourishing field of disability art history, where the lived experience of disability is centered, and where disability is deployed as a core methodology in art praxis.