Daily Inspiration: Meet Alexis Neumann

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexis Neumann.

Hi Alexis, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m an installation artist and community organizer who uplifts the disabled artist community. I started singing opera, studying music and musical theater and when I was diagnosed with a joint disease known as Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, I pivoted to making more visual art. I’ve done art installation throughout the West Coast and will be doing more this summer as part of the Long Beach Walls/ Art Renzei Festival. I also run the platform @Disabled.Artists which shares other artists exploring their disability in their artwork.

Longer bio:

Alexis Neumann is an artist and community organizer creating mixed media installations and artwork that focus on interconnectedness, intricacy, and resiliency, informed by her experience with disability. that engages Disability Studies, Theology, and Intersectionality through her interactive installations and mixed media art works. Her work focuses on interconnectedness, intricacy, and resiliency in the body and world to draw attention to the complexities of the human experience, often using bio-medical imagery and accessible materials like vinyl, copper wire, and plexiglass, as well as light and sound. She holds an MFA in Visual Studies and an MA in Critical Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University, as well as degrees in Comparative History and Music from the University of Washington. She lives with multiple invisible illnesses including Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and platforms other artists with disabilities through her curation. She highlights the experience of disability and the unique knowledge and wisdom that it brings to people with similar life experiences and is passionate about advancing equity and sharing the realities of dynamic disability. Her public works and interactive installations have been featured in art festivals like Long Beach Walls/Art Renzei, Lusio Lights, Portland Winter Light Festival, Shine on Seattle, HEART (Cascadia Healthcare), and her work has been featured by The Royal Society of London. For her community organization and curation in Disability Arts she has been awarded grants like the Precipice Fund from Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and exhibited at Chehalem Cultural Center, Long Beach Creative Group, SATOR Projects, the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, 4Culture, and more. Alexis lived in Portland and Seattle for the past 10 years and has returned to Southern California where she grew up in Encinitas, CA and is now based in Long Beach, CA.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Tons of struggles! And I’ve made a career and so many connections based on the struggles. My work explores my experience with disability and how it has brought me so much more knowledge, connection, and has transformed my relationship with my body, self, rest, and worth. Becoming disabled has made me (painfully) aware of where my worth and identity used to lie which was in outside validation: my efficiency, how much work I did, and how people perceived me. Chasing that external appreciation, and most importantly, the respect and prestige that comes with that, ran me into the ground and quite literally disabled me. It brought to the forefront years of suppression that made my genetic disability, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, flare up and trigger the flare up of other autoimmune disorders. The next 7 years was a journey of being diagnosed with a new autoimmune disorder, infection, or virus every few months. Which made it feel never-ending and hopeless and made me realize how important finding and creating hope, beauty, goodness, and purpose became out of the resilience that I was forced to find through this journey. Our society, especially American society, values ‘hard work’ only in the form of efficiency, output, and production for a monetary value, and doesn’t give thought or appreciation to the development of our sense of self and how we interact with the world around us. The work of the arts, humanities, education, environment, and so many other fields are evidence of this. And one of the main struggles that I had to learn was how to listen to my own body, how to listen and appreciate what I actually wanted and needed to show up well for other people, and that has been the most hard work I have ever done. In terms of disability, this hard work means countless hours (50+ hours a week) of managing my body so that I can be in the least amount of pain possible, which is never no amount of pain. This includes managing and picking up medications, getting treatments, researching my conditions, doctors appointments, finding doctors who will help me, advocating for myself, endlessly battling with health insurance to get them to pay for my basic care when I already spend $850+ a month on just my basic healthcare out of my own pocket…. and so much more.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I specialize in making art installations that explore my experience with disability! My art is filled with color, light and messages of hope, interconnectedness and resilience. I have numerous installations that I am particularly proud of, my most recent series “Rose-Colored Windows” is about finding and searching for hope in the midst of multiple layers of confusion, pain, and hardship inspired by traditional stained glass windows that are found in churches throughout history all over the world. I was honored to make a building-wide installation in the Long Beach City Hall – Chamber of Commerce for the Long Beach Walls/ Art Renzei festival in July of 2025. And my first art installation series titled “Neural Nebulous” was featured by The Royal Society of London for their Disability Technology Report. “Neural Nebulous” is an installation made with copper wire and LEDs, that I started at the beginning of my art career, which is inspired by my migraines, and relates our brain’s neural networks to the vast unknowns of space. Different iterations of the “Neural Nebulous” were featured in lights festivals such as Lusio Light Festival in Seattle, Portland Winter Lights Festival, Tacoma Light Trail, and Wintertide Festival of Lights in Port Angeles. Doing these festivals was my start to creating installation art in public spaces and has been a passion of mine ever since. Another series of mine that I am excited to be starting to explore is about Spoon Theory, which is a very well-known concept in the disability community about limited capacity and energy through the concept of kitchen spoons, my installation is currently titled “The Weight of Spoons.” The purpose of this installation is to make visible the incredible and compounding amount of work, burdens, and factors that make living with disability so difficult in a language already known and used widely in the disability community but that honors and respects differing levels of capacity and energy at different times.

As a community organizer, making the online platform @disabled.artists has been an incredible experience. It was born out of my own personal research of other artists with disabilities and also was born out of necessity because there was nothing else like this out there at the time. I wanted to create a space that was dedicated to high-quality, thoughtful artwork that explores disability honestly from our perspective, and not just as a way for people to ‘be inspired’ by disabled people’s hardships, commonly known as “inspiration porn” in the disability community. I have been blessed to connect with 4000+ people all over the world and develop a Disabled Artists Calendar which will also run for the 2027 year. I do a holiday gift list titled “Disabled Artists To Buy From This Holiday Season” which has featured over 250 creators with disabilities. I have organized an exhibition and lecture series for artists with disabilities in Portland and am working with other LA Disability Arts leaders to bring something similar to LA this Fall. I’m always looking for opportunities to uplift the disability arts community and love to collaborate with others.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
There is so much unique knowledge that the disability community has to share that can transform our understanding of self, community, identity, worth, and so much more. But disabled people are faced with SO many barriers just to survive that creates an unimaginable amount of exhaustion and fatigue. Disability is the only thing that connects us all, it will touch all of us at some point in our lives, and is an inevitable part of the human experience. Listening to people with disabilities and creating opportunities for their ideas and perspectives to be heard can only benefit us all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alexisneumann.com
• Instagram: @alexisneumann.art
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alexisneumann
• Other: @disabled.artists

Image Credits
Headshot was taken by Katherine Curry.

All other photos are taken by the artist, Alexis Neumann.