The Danaid Collaboration (DanaidX) is a Baltimore based duo formed by Hope Brooks and Angela Yarian. Yarian spent 10 years unable to make work because of a debilitating illness, despite holding a degree in art.  Likewise, Brooks, a trans woman,  photographer and data engineer, also wrestles with her own chronic pain issues.  Emerging from a quest to make art from a place that acknowledges present realities, their collaboration resists trying to be more abled-bodies than they are. Through an attentive, slow-moving method of making cyanotypes, they embrace limitations as a fertile ground for creative work, and as a possibility for expanding the dialogue on what constitutes a successful art practice and life.  DanaidX’s name comes from the Greek myth about the danaid sisters, cursed by the gods to endlessly fill a cistern riddled with holes.  Chronic illness makes simple tasks into broken cisterns.  DanaidX asks: what if we were able to plug those holes for each other?

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