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Content note: this artwork contains references to death and themes that may cause distress.

The ‘DWP Deaths Make Me Sick’ shrouds were first created as a backdrop to a live performance organised by Vince and 13 other disability rights activists at Norwich Arts Centre in 2018. The performance, ‘A Very Queer Nazi Faust’, was commissioned by Unlimited. Since then, Vince has continued to create new shrouds and they have been exhibited all over the UK. 

To date, the artist has made twenty five shrouds, each of which commemorates the life of a named person who has died as a result of the ‘hostile environment’ for disabled people created by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The details of each individual person’s death are shocking and tragic. Presented together, however, a second story begins to emerge, of a system that knowingly continues to fail the very people that it exists to support.

‘I want to get them seen. I feel the need to carry on screaming about the human rights abuses of the UK government, whether under the Lib Dem/Tory coalition, under the Tories, or now, being continued under Labour. The shrouds are actually quite painful to make. I take breaks. They are very sad. But also very powerful, because they are the truth.’

BSL

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