Eco-Crip: Exploring the Intersections of Disability Identity and the Environment Through Artistic Practice
Time: April 16, 2026, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Location: Shaffer Galleria | Shemin Auditorium
Part of the Syracuse Symposium series.
Jointly presented by the Visiting Artists Lecture Series (VALS) in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the Syracuse University Art Museum, artists Alex Dolores Salerno and Francisco echo Eraso offer an experimental lecture on the intersections of disabled identity and ecological crisis. Given the increasingly toxic and disabling environments across the globe, disability is simultaneously deemed “unnatural” and therefore disposable and to be eradicated.
Through an “Eco-Crip” framework, Salerno and Eraso challenge the idea of disability as a pathological deficit. Looking to Disability Justice principles to challenge binaries of natural/unnatural and normal/abnormal, disability is presented as part of human diversity and as a cultural and political identity. Together Salerno and Eraso discuss their own art practices alongside the work of contemporary disabled artists to illuminate disability as a crucial source of wisdom and leadership for the future ahead of us.
5:00 p.m. - welcome reception
6:30 p.m. - presentation begins
Related: Salerno and Eraso offer a community workshop on April 17.
About the presenters:
Francisco echo Eraso (he/él) is a Colombian American interdisciplinary artist, educator and access worker. He uses textiles and ceramics as well as minimalist sculpture and sound art to engage topics of liberation theology, family, and revolution.
He received his MFA in Fine Arts from Rutgers University in 2025 and a BA/BFA from Parsons, The New School in Visual Studies and Fine Arts in 2018. He has been a keynote speaker at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2025), received the Wynn Newhouse Award (2024), received the LEAD award from the Kennedy center (2023) and served as the call to action speaker for the Art-Reach Conference on Arts, Culture and Disability (2023). He has been an artist-in-residence at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts SHIFT residency for arts workers (2022-2023), FABSCRAP (2022-2023), Textile Arts Center (2020-2021), 77Art (2021) and Art Beyond Sight’s Art and Disability Residency (2021). He has exhibited at Mason Gross Galleries (NJ), The Re-Institute, Tempest Gallery, The Shed, EFA Project Space, Westbeth Gallery, Chashama Space Gallery, Ford Foundation Gallery, Amos Eno Gallery, Flux Factory and Sheila C. Johnson Gallery (NY), Mead Museum and A.P.E. Gallery (MA), The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (OH), Museo Antonini in Peru, among others. He has been published by NYU Press (2025) Art in America (2022), and Ugly Duckling Press (2020).
Eraso currently works as an accessibility consultant, independent curator, and part-time lecturer at Rutgers University, Parsons - The New School and Middlesex Community College.
Alex Dolores Salerno (b. Nacotchtank and Piscataway land / Washington D.C.) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) in Turtle Island in Abya Yala. Their practice is informed by “queer-crip” community, and the radical shifts necessary to center interdependence and nurture connections to the earth.
Salerno received their MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and their BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College. They exhibit nationally and internationally at venues such as Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt), Espai d'Art Contemporani de Castelló (Castellón de la Plana), ARGOS centre for audiovisual arts (Brussels), Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT), Brooklyn Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Ford Foundation Gallery (NYC), among others. They have been awarded a Wynn Newhouse Award (2022) and an Art Matters Foundation Artist2Artist Fellowship (2023), and their work has been featured by press and publishers such as Art in America, NYU Press, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, ALL ARTS, and Hyperallergic. Salerno has been an artist in residence across NYC at Art Beyond Sight’s Art & Disability Residency (2019-2020), the Artist Studios Program at the Museum of Arts and Design (2021), the Visual Artist AIRspace Residency at Abrons Arts Center (2022-2023), the BRIClab: Contemporary Art Residency Program at BRIC (2023-2024), the LMCC Workspace Residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2024-2025) and NY4CA Artist Advocates in Residence (2025).