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Sins Invalid is a disability justice-based performance project that focuses on artists with disabilities, artists of color, and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid's performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. In addition to multidisciplinary performances by people with disabilities, Sins Invalid organizes visual art exhibitions, readings, and a bi-monthly educational video series. Sins Invalid collaborates with other movement-building projects and provides disability justice training.
According to a Huffington Post interview conducted by Cory Silverburg with Berne and Moore, Sins Invalid's (pronounced as in "not valid") name came from the idea that a disabled child is a manifestation of "the sins of the father being cast upon the son". As Berne articulates, there is a pervasive societal norm that validates bodies according to beauty, hygienic, health, and other sets of standards. These sets of standards had led to people needing to behave in societally acceptable ways. Such "markers" are used to determine if someone had a disability, linking "cultural devaluation of disability and other undesirable characteristics." However, in opposition to the societal norm, Sins Invalid's framework asserts that humans have a wide variety of embodiments, and all bodies are valid and worthy of celebration. It is also a Word play, since people with disabilities have historically been referred to as "invalids".
Since its creation, Sins Invalid has held annual major theater performances and an artist-in-residence performance, which have all received critical acclaim. In 2012, the project launched a Kickstarter campaign, culminating in the 2013 release of a 32-minute documentary titled Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility, directed by Berne, which details its disability justice efforts and the value of artistic expression. The documentary also elucidates the need for the inclusion of sex and sexuality in disability rights discourse.
Alison Kafer states an intersectionality between homosexuality and disability. She mentions that in the literature of reproductive technologies contains its "'proper' use" that supports the idea of heterocentrism and homophobia, further intersecting with ableism and Stereotype of disability as well. Sins Invalid addresses this intersectionality by its goal to move from individual legal rights toward a Collective right through their performances. Berne's writing speaks to both types of change. She uses herself as an example, discussing the fact that her wheelchair does not climb stairs and asking the reader if this is a problem with the wheelchair or a problem with the stairs. Berne encourages her audience to think critically about our surroundings and the barriers that exist for various members of society due to identity. Berne and Moore both view the oppression of the non-normative body as something to move beyond, toward opportunities for liberation and beauty and a new vision of embodiment.
Sins Invalid's celebration of the multiplicity and diversity of identities is an iteration of intersectionality in practice. The human body is not permanent and unchanging; rather, it is a non-static being that can change based on nature, the environment, or perception. Since disability does not discriminate, it is useful as a category of analysis in terms of its potential to create, as disability studies scholar Simi Linton puts it, "a prism through which one can gain a broader understanding of society and human experience". Since Sins Invalid includes performers with disabilities who are also people of color, queer, etc., intersectionality is woven into its performances and guiding ideology. This only proves anyone can be a part of disability justice, all organized from "their own spoons, own bodies and minds, and own communities." In the documentary, Sins Invalid member Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha comments on the freedom that the space provides for various manifestations of difference, such as queerness. They say, "No one has to closet themselves," and this applies to any identity. This ties into Berne's idea of being able to "orient the gaze," or the position the audience occupies as consumers of the performance. Since the project is conscious of so many diverse lenses and does not limit the frame to disability, performers and audience members alike have the opportunity to feel empowered by the acknowledgement of identities.
In order to understand the idea of embodiment, of occupying the body, Berne states, one must have an understanding of the body as situated within a historical, political, cultural, and social context. The intersectionality enters again, as disability justice is being added to social justice, not because it's another factor of diversity and representation, but also because disability justice can transform what society perceive of the "quality of life, purpose, work, relationships, belonging" for people with disabilities. Feminist disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that, "integrating disability as a category of analysis and a system of representation deepens, expands, and challenges feminist theory". For Garland-Thomson, the "shared human experience of embodiment" provides a framework in which all individuals should be able to understand the way systems affect or do not affect them based on their bodies.
Beyond the ways in which Sins Invalid embodies how their performances serve as a fight for disability justice, the term also portrays the importance of access for this marginalized community. For people supporting the disability movement, they know that "access is just the first step on the way to a liberated disabled future." And in a way, Sins Invalid has given their very own access in expressing their fight for liberation in a non-normative space through their performances. The continuing fight for representation also proves that disability is a "widely shared experience," intersecting with many factors of modern life. And by considering disability as an experience present in everywhere we go, Sins Invaid only conveys that the non-normative also possibly leads to what is also considered the societal norm.
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