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It's wonderful to be here

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to talk about my journey,

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to talk about the wheelchair

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and the freedom it has bought me.

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I started using a wheelchair 16 years ago

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when an extended illness

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changed the way I could access the world.

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When I started using the wheelchair,

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it was a tremendous new freedom.

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I'd seen my life slip away and become restricted.

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It was like having an enormous new toy.

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I could whiz around and feel the wind in my face again.

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Just being out on the street was exhilarating.

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But even though I had this newfound joy and freedom,

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people's reaction completely changed towards me.

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It was as if they couldn't see me anymore,

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as if an invisibility cloak had descended.

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They seemed to see me in terms of their assumptions

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of what it must be like to be in a wheelchair.

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When I asked people their associations with the wheelchair,

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they used words like "limitation," "fear,"

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"pity" and "restriction."

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I realized I'd internalized these responses

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and it had changed who I was on a core level.

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A part of me had become alienated from myself.

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I was seeing myself not from my perspective,

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but vividly and continuously from the perspective

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of other people's responses to me.

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As a result, I knew I needed to make my own stories

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about this experience,

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new narratives to reclaim my identity.

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["Finding Freedom: 'By creating our own stories we learn to take the texts of our lives as seriously as we do 'official' narratives.' — Davis 2009, TEDx Women"]

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I started making work

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that aimed to communicate something

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of the joy and freedom I felt when using a wheelchair --

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a power chair -- to negotiate the world.

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I was working to transform these internalized responses,

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to transform the preconceptions that had so shaped

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my identity when I started using a wheelchair,

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by creating unexpected images.

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The wheelchair became an object to paint and play with.

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When I literally started leaving

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traces of my joy and freedom,

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it was exciting to see

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the interested and surprised responses from people.

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It seemed to open up new perspectives,

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and therein lay the paradigm shift.

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It showed that an arts practice

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can remake one's identity

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and transform preconceptions by revisioning the familiar.

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So when I began to dive, in 2005,

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I realized scuba gear extends your range of activity

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in just the same way as a wheelchair does,

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but the associations attached to scuba gear

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are ones of excitement and adventure,

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completely different to people's responses to the wheelchair.

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So I thought, "I wonder what'll happen

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if I put the two together?" (Laughter) (Applause)

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And the underwater wheelchair that has resulted

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has taken me on the most amazing journey

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over the last seven years.

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So to give you an idea of what that's like,

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I'd like to share with you one of the outcomes

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from creating this spectacle,

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and show you what an amazing journey it's taken me on.

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(Music)

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(Applause)

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It is the most amazing experience,

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beyond most other things I've experienced in life.

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I literally have the freedom to move

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in 360 degrees of space

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and an ecstatic experience of joy and freedom.

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And the incredibly unexpected thing

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is that other people seem to see and feel that too.

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Their eyes literally light up,

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and they say things like, "I want one of those,"

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or, "If you can do that, I can do anything."

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And I'm thinking, it's because in that moment

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of them seeing an object

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they have no frame of reference for,

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or so transcends the frames of reference

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they have with the wheelchair,

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they have to think in a completely new way.

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And I think that moment of completely new thought

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perhaps creates a freedom

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that spreads to the rest of other people's lives.

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For me, this means that they're seeing

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the value of difference,

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the joy it brings

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when instead of focusing on loss or limitation,

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we see and discover the power and joy

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of seeing the world from exciting new perspectives.

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For me, the wheelchair becomes

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a vehicle for transformation.

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In fact, I now call the underwater wheelchair "Portal,"

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because it's literally pushed me through

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into a new way of being,

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into new dimensions and into a new level of consciousness.

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And the other thing is,

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that because nobody's seen or heard

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of an underwater wheelchair before,

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and creating this spectacle is about creating

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new ways of seeing, being and knowing,

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now you have this concept in your mind.

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You're all part of the artwork too.

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(Applause)