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?
