Bonington Vitrines #31: The Velvet Acronyms – It’s a Wonderful Protest
Bonington Gallery is pleased to present It’s a Wonderful Protest, a new exhibition by The Velvet Acronyms, a collaboration between artists Anna Li and Simon Raven.
Anna & Simon’s work uses satirical ‘crip humour’ to challenge ableism in the arts, from the ghettoisation of disability art to condescendingly ‘celebratory’ forms of inclusion.
The Bonington Vitrines area will be transformed into an ‘Exclusion Zone’ for performance in which participation is encouraged – from taking part in an absurdly upbeat ‘Wonderful Protest’ to joining a ‘Psychic Music’ ritual aimed at relieving student debt.
The exhibition includes an archive of previously unseen films, prominent performance relics, photographs, posters, and participatory interventions.
Some spaces will intentionally be left unfinished, allowing new documentation and traces of live performances to accumulate during the exhibition.
About The Velvet Acronyms
The Velvet Acronyms (VA) is a collaboration between artists Anna Li (UKR) and Simon Raven (UK). Inspired by Disabled Avant-Garde (DAG), a satirical organisation founded by Aaron Williamson and Katherine Araniello whose work in performance, video, and intervention challenges negative perceptions of disability. Their practice combines crip humour, absurdity, and social critique, positioning disability as a critical and epistemological lens rather than a fixed or medicalised identity.
Anna and Simon bring distinct embodied perspectives into a shared inquiry informed by the social model of disability. Drawing on avant-garde art and experimental performance, VA interrogates cultural, political, and aesthetic structures, pushing disability art beyond representation towards confrontation, irony, and lived experience.
Website: https://www.velvetacronyms.art/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/velvetacronyms/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VelvetAcronyms