No. 9 — Jen Shear x SIQ 2021-2022 Calendar
Jen Shear
February 2021

For Mascot’s 9th project, we are pleased to collaborate with Jen Shear on a 2021-2022 calendar. All proceeds from the calendar will go to Sick in Quarters (SIQ), a network founded by disabled and chronically ill artists and activists, working to create community, connection, and advocacy for disability justice.

Jen Shear (b. Taipei, Taiwan) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores memory, archive, and visual culture. She is currently based in New Brunswick, NJ, where she is pursuing an MFA at Rutgers University.

About SIQ: Sick in Quarters (SIQ) is a network of disabled and chronically ill artists and activists, connected to each other and working in collaboration through the internet. Because of our own struggles with self-advocacy, we recognize a need for information that has not been easily shared within our own histories of navigating illness inside bureaucratic systems. Through curating a library of knowledge based on lived experience, in addition to community-building workshops, we seek to empower our comrades and peers with a greater sense of agency while navigating the path of their own care and treatment.

Historically, disability has been the exclusive domain of the biological, social, and cognitive arenas that shape practice in education, rehabilitative medicine, and social work. But people with disabilities never seem to be included in the normative order of things.

There remains much to be learned about understanding disability as part of the larger human experience. Policies and practices that have a direct impact on the material reality of living with disability are rarely examined by society. People with disabilities know that the fundamental issue is not one of an individual’s inabilities or limitations, but rather a hostile unadaptive society.

Sick in Quarters prioritizes the perspectives and voices of intersectionally-marginalized disabled, chronically ill, mentally ill, and neurodivergent people to make navigating disability less solitary, less daunting, and a more informed endeavor — where individuals can feel empowered and supported by community.

Learn more on the SIQ website and Instagram.

Image description: [black text and black graphics on off-white sheet of newsprint, in a vinyl sleeve with a tiny star cut-out centered at the top] 2021 calendar divided into 3 columns with four rows, months and days in 12 small squares broken up with six above and six below, a moon phase calendar in between. Vertical text on the right side reads: 2021 [black text with multi-colored rhinestone on “0”] and Jen Shear / Mascot. Edition number hand-stamped in bottom right corner. There is a narrow receipt of text layered on top of the calendar inside the vinyl sleeve [black text on receipt paper] SIQ + information about Sick in Quarters with QRC code at bottom and SIQ website.