Lutte Collective’s Hayley Cranberry Talks Art and Disability Justice

“Do You Want Us Here or Not 1,” 2018. MDO and paint, 72″L x 26″W x 36″H. Shannon Finnegan (April 2019 Lutte Featured Artist), designed in collaboration with Charles Mathis and Chat Travieso. Fabrication by Charles Mathis. a blue bench with hand-painted text that reads, “This exhibition has asked me to stand for too long. Sit if you agree.” The Dedalus Foundation

I can’t recall exactly how I first came to know of Hayley Cranberry — whether it was her globular, chain-gilded ceramics or precious dachshund Greta that first found its way into my feed — but my appreciation for her work has only amplified the longer I’ve followed her. Hayley is the founder of Lutte Collective, an online space for disabled and chronically ill artists, providing much-needed visibility and a community that, while it’s centered online, provides support stretching far beyond the digital realm. 

Lutte publishes interviews with artists whose experiences of sickness and disability vary as widely as their unique creative practices. Although Hayley started the collective and is responsible for the behind-the-scenes labor that keeps it running, it strives to be a space of intersectionality, prioritizing gender-diverse and BIPOC artists. The collective’s Instagram offers a forum for shorter-form, candid expression, affording a casual space for connectivity that feels more needed than ever as the pandemic presses on. 

Jaklin Romine (November 2020 Lutte Featured Artist) in her studio, photographed by Ashaka Matthews.
Jaklin has brown skin and wears a black tank and a black skirt in her wheelchair. The wheelchair has blue rims. She is surrounded by foam and fabrics hanging from the walls and surrounding her on the floor. They are mostly pastel colors, sea foam green, pink, blue, white, and yellow. Ashaka Matthews / Jaklin Romine

Observer: Can you tell me the story of how Lutte started via social media? How can these platforms, which so often feel like empty attention-sinkholes, be refigured as spaces of care and community with collectives like Lutte?
Hayley Cranberry: Lutte has existed solely online since its inception. It is meant to be accessible to people who are unable to go out to art shows or experience art because of their disabilities.

Social media often feels like an empty place. But I do hope that Lutte’s existence makes others feel more included, or that they might be able to meet someone online from the community who they can vent to, or someone who lives near them that can help pick up their prescriptions. While Lutte is most notably a space for interviews with disabled artists, our Instagram stories also serve as a crucial feature. They are where we can quickly get word out about people who need money and care, and share others’ art and open calls.

Can you expand on how Lutte has become a source of support and connection beyond the digital realm, extending into “away-from-keyboard” (to borrow Legacy Russell’s preferred phrase) mutual aid and care?
I have met so many people through the disability arts/justice community that have become friends (online and offline) and offer me care in one way or another. Someone sent me a medication in the mail that they no longer needed after my insurance would barely cover it and it was $1500. I sent someone a bunch of medical supplies I didn’t need anymore to someone across the country who desperately needed them to finish their infusion regimen.

I literally cried of happiness when the latter connection happened. It felt so important to me. And I know — because people often tell me — that others have made connections from Lutte’s platform similar to how I have.

One of the things that’s so moving about Lutte is how it has become a (growing!) archive of the multiple and totally varied forms that illness and disability can take. In a way, it’s helped me come to terms with my own chronic illness, to take ownership over that language and seek out a community with a similar experience. How has your own understanding of illness and disability evolved since you started the collective?
I didn’t even “identify” as chronically ill in 2017 before I started Lutte, despite being sick since I was 14 (in 2006). And I definitely did not consider myself disabled! I now have such a broader understanding of illness and disability than ever before. Lutte artists represent the wide range of what disability can be. Many of the forms disability takes, as represented on Lutte, are not my lived experience at all. Instead, Lutte has become a culmination of many lived experiences.

Hayley Cranberry Small at home, photographed by Aleck Venegas. Hayley rests her head on her arms atop a white table. Next to her is one of her ceramic vessels entitled ‘i often mis-take my dreams for memories,’ which is a lumpy bright lime green vessel with an ear-like handle. The handle is pierced and has a chain through it, which connects to a black ceramic flower petal that is atop it. Hayley Cranberry

How have illness and disability shaped your values around productivity?
This is probably one of my favorite topics. Productivity is a fake, capitalist concept. Rest is real and actually matters. I think I’ve felt this way my entire life, though being sick has exacerbated it, and The Nap Ministry, a Black-run organization founded by Tricia Hersey, has helped me articulate and understand this as a concept.

Lutte has a monthly featured artist, but sometimes, because I am unable to complete an interview, or the artist is unable to complete their part (both likely due to disability), there have become intermittent gaps in the “monthly” feature. You can see these gaps if you look at the archive of artists. I like how these gaps now represent the acceptance of rest, disability, and illness (including mental illness), while embracing the rejection of productivity. Nothing is going to happen if I don’t publish an artist one month. Nothing depends on it. Time is not real. Productivity is fake and what you produce doesn’t matter. I’d rather both me and that artist rest and feel a little better instead.

Garnet Williams, also known as Trans Fat (March 2021 Lutte Featured Artist), wearing Rebirth Garments, an accessible queer clothing line by Sky Cubacub (March 2020 Lutte Featured Artist). Photographed by Ethan Jollie. TransFat is a Black drag queen wearing a purple wig and has dramatic eye make up on. They are wearing a loose super crop top in lime green, neon yellow, royal blue and aqua meshes and laces, and leggings in purple and green with black and white triangles. They are standing with their arms holding onto their royal blue walker. Ethan Jollie