Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community artist and she teaches in performance studies and disability studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias Performance Research Series, and Olimpias workshops, installations, performances and exhibitions have been created and shown in Europe, the US, New Zealand and Australia. All Olimpias work are community-based, and deal with disability culture issues, with the opportunities of collaborative practice, and with the celebration of difference.
Kuppers has written a number of books, including Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (Routledge, 2003), The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art (Minnesota University Press, 2007) and Community Performance: An Introduction (Routledge, 2007). She has also co-edited with Gwen Robertson the companion text, Community Performance Reader (Routledge, 2007). Her current work addresses disability history, and includes a reassessment of the ancients myth that shape our thoughts about bodily, sensorily and mental difference. Tiresias is the latest Olimpias show.
