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Pamela Price, who just turned 65, wants everyone to know everything about her. The poet and artist was born in Philadelphia with cerebral palsy and has been wheelchair-bound her entire life. She has turned over a huge collection of about 270 paintings, writings, photographs, videos and newspaper clippings to Undue Burden, a digital archive cataloging the creative lives of disabled, neurodivergent and chronically ill people in Philadelphia.
Created by Hook and Loop, a collective of disabled artists and activists, the Undue Burden archive currently has almost 500 records and is still growing. Price’s collection, titled “I want to tell them everything,” represents more than half of it.
It includes her abstract paintings, an undated photograph of her younger self which she notated with “I am looking cute,” and her appearance in many newspaper clippings, including her name in an above-the-fold headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 21, 1976, about the death of her mother.
“She has an amazing collection from her life,” said Shannon Brooks, a Hook and Loop member who launched the archive in 2021 with Price.
“She’s had a long life going through all of the struggles and all of the joys and passions and loves that one can have living proudly as a disabled person,” she said.