Artist Feature: Kalyn Rose Heffernan

Kalyn Rose Heffernan has built a career out of refusing the terms by which disabled people, queer people, and working-class communities are often represented.

A rapper, performer, educator, community advocate, and founding member of the experimental group Wheelchair Sports Camp, Heffernan’s work moves across music, theater, film, television, museum interventions, creative direction, performance art, permanent installations, politics, and public protest.

Her practice is confrontational, humorous, loving, and deliberately difficult to categorize. Heffernan has performed internationally and locally, bringing a voice rooted in disability justice, queer liberation, and community accountability into spaces that have not always known how to hold it.

Her work insists that accessibility is not simply a technical accommodation but a cultural and political question: who is allowed to belong, who gets to lead, and who gets heard without being translated for comfort.

With support from the award, Heffernan will launch Wheelchair Band Camp, a project designed to create inclusive, artist-led space for disabled young people to make noise, express themselves, and take up space with support from local musicians.

‍
Film credits:

Anthony Grimes (Director and Producer)
Leland Schmidt
Brandon Smith
Lawrence Dvorack

‍