We were lucky to catch up with Kadazia Allen-Perry recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kadazia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

You know the butterfly effect? The idea that one tiny change in the past could have drastically changed your present or future. I’ve never been able to pinpoint what that moment could be for me because I was born disabled. Being disabled puts you in a box with very specific parameters according to the limitations your disability/ies present/s you with.
When your disability happens unexpectedly in the middle of your life it’s a real shock to the system. Suddenly, you have to adapt to a new normal within a box you never consented to living within.
When you’re born with a disability the immediate prioritization of your survival acts as your consent. Your normal is different than everyone else’s from jump. You may not even notice it at first because it’s all you’ve ever known/will know. As time goes on, every new life stage acts as a reminder or a discovery of new limitations that don’t mirror those of your peers.
In grade school I always gravitated toward artistic hobbies. Looking back, was that because I loved being artistically creative or because I wasn’t physically able to handle athletic hobbies?
I even went to an arts high school, majored in theater, and minored in songwriting. I couldn’t do choir because my lungs couldn’t hack it. I really did love theater though.
In pursuit of a career as a talk show host, I tried transitioning away from all art all the time by pursuing a psychology degree my first year of college, but my mental health plummeted. After a failed attempt to take my life and a two-week hospitalization, I spent the last three years of college finding out I was seriously awesome at filmmaking and telling stories. Knowing that depression and anxiety were there to stay and being prescribed the right cocktail of medications made focusing on something creative the easier step forward.
I didn’t really get the chance to pursue a serious career in filmmaking after graduating college though, my cystic fibrosis started to progress at a rapid rate. I was dying at 24 years old. I attended a showing of my first feature length film, Chronic Means Forever, at a Seattle film festival and won the audience choice award, accepting it from my wheelchair and sipping on sweet, sweet, bottled oxygen. After that though it got too hard to get out of bed and I spent months trying to stay awake with my pregnant sister, mom, and kind home care aid just waiting for a miracle.
At 25 I had a lung transplant and immediately applied for and got accepted into a Sculpture Festival in Vermont. I constructed a set of 5-foot lungs and put together two montage videos to be projected on either side of the lungs documenting snippets of my life pre- and post-transplant.
Less than a year after my transplant my friend and I were about to start up a social media hub/cohort/business/thingymabob. That was in February of 2020.
I spent the pandemic teaching art classes on all the different tactile art mediums I’ve dabbled in over the years.
In January 2022 I moved across the country on my own to live by myself for the first time. Being disabled since birth didn’t mean anything to the Georgia healthcare system so I had to start from scratch and didn’t start receiving all my medications until August of that year. But during those 8 months I turned one of my bedrooms into an art studio and got really into printmaking.
I’ve always found myself falling back into art at every difficult stage in my life.
I often wonder if always falling back into something is the same as it being a passion.
I love collecting various art supplies. I wind down for bed by listening to an audiobook and watching a timelapse of someone’s latest art project on YouTube. I don’t struggle with a lack of creative ideas, I never have. In fact, my creative idea generation far outpaces my creative execution of projects. I’m good at creative/artistic things, great even. I have a real eye and skill for pretty much any art medium I’ve tried my hand at. Working on a creative project typically does wonders for my mental health. When I’m finished with a project, sitting back and being able to say “I made dis” is a rush. But is that the same as being passionate about art?
I think I’m passionate about art, I mean I always go back to it and I’m an endless well of ideas. But, like, other options? Did I really have any other options?
I can’t imagine myself working 9-5 in a factory or cubicle. That’s not just because of my pull toward creative work though. It’s also because I have a metal rod in my back that makes sitting or standing for any sustained period of time unbearable. It’s also because my diabetes sugar lows and spikes are unpredictable. It’s also because all the medicines I take every morning and evening have various side effects and leaves me feeling fatigued day in and day out. It’s also because the way my anxiety is set up, I get overwhelmed very easily from being overstimulated by the presence and noises of others. All those “alsos” are direct results of my various disabilities. Without those disabilities would I be able to stand a 9-5? Could I even enjoy it? Or at the very least be content with it enough to settle for my here and there hobby hours after work and on the weekends?
Who knows. Certainly not me. I enjoy this box; I’ve found contentment and even happiness within it. But also, life inside this box is the only one I’ve ever known. Out of both physical and mental survival I’ve mostly made peace with this beautiful prison, at least I get to paint the walls and toss some glitter through the bars.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Creating has been a vital part of my life from the very beginning. When I tell you I made the best finger paintings on the market, I mean, my mom still wears the t-shirt with my handprints on it that I made her when I was in Kindergarten. I was diagnosed with a terminal illness called cystic fibrosis when I was 18 months old. I won’t get deep into the inner workings of CF but I will tell you that it drastically diminishes a person’s quality of life and gives the person an estimated life expectancy of about 37 years. Creating was how I saw past those 37 years. When I was elbow deep in play-doh I could feel hope bubbling and squishing between my fingers. When I was surrounded by the scraps of construction paper on the floor of my bedroom, I could see the road map to my dreams that were still waiting to be claimed. Creating always gave me purpose because it presented me with a future statistics have continuously told me isn’t possible.

After 25 years of doctors’ appointments, medicines, breathing treatments, hospital exasperations, familial abandonment, anxiety, depression, a suicide attempt, sexual assault, of finding a way to breathe at 16% lung function… Somehow, creativity still has a hold on me. And after waking up from a double lung transplant on April 15, 2019, I am finally able to fully accept its embrace. My doctors and I had been in “keep Kadazia alive” mode for the past two years. The CF progressed fast, and my motivation to create diminished just as quickly. Then I got the call and suddenly I went from being in a wheelchair and on oxygen full time to being able to walk a couple miles when I had a fried seafood craving.

Aside from being disabled, I am also queer, a non-binary womxn, and Black. All of the intersections that I occupy have been historically and intentionally stripped of their humanity and expected to be content with this. I never accepted these terms and conditions. Instead, through creating art, I saw the abundance of possibilities that lie within and beyond these intersections I occupy. I am a multi-media artist because I don’t see just one possibility, one future, one dream for myself. I work across mediums to find the stories I want to tell and how they would like to be told. As an artist, I intend to show others alongside me the possibilities creation can offer them as well.

My art aspires to illustrate, design, print, paint, sculpt, write and film marginalized folks into realities we’ve never been privy to. Into stories that have never been told about us. Into futures that have never included us. My art aspires to make the dreams of the most vulnerable possible… to make us possible.

BIOGRAPHY

In a world exclusively designed by and for the white, the male, the able-bodied, and the straight… Kadazia Allen-Perry, a queer, disabled, Black non-binary womxn, dared to want more than just their next breath. Deciding that surviving wasn’t enough they set out to be a full-time freelance multi-media artist and teacher. Their audacity goes one step further as they strive to explore the intersectionalities within Black identities that go beyond the blueprints laid out in mainstream representations of Blackness.

Kadazia has allowed their hands to construct stories based on the foundational elements of identity through an endless variety of mediums. This has led to showing and winning awards for their first feature-length film in numerous film festivals, a showcasing of multiple multi-media installations, and consistent work as a teaching artist that has taken them from 2018 to the present day.

They intend to use the lens and other artistic tools as points of access for marginalized communities to command their own narratives and explore their potential for creativity. Kadazia’s dream isn’t to be rich or famous. They simply want to make enough to fund their next artistic project and along the way build a creative network that services those who are most often overlooked, because they tend to have the biggest imaginations.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Growing up Black, disabled, ugly and woman-presenting in HWHITE Washington State was its own particular brand of torture. That didn’t stop me from recognizing the clear advantages I had over my cousins growing up on the dirt road in South Carolina. I often envied them, getting to live on the road names after our grandaddy, being so close to kin all the time, getting to look like their neighbors. But unlike a lot of my cousins, I graduated high school and then graduated college and still got to live with my mom and got to blow a lot of money on fast food and art supplies. Hell, I got to wonder if there was anything I was passionate about that I wanted to pursue as a career. That is privilege. Those things sound simple ad shouldn’t be a luxury, but they are. In a lot of ways, I always had to worry about my survival, but I also got to have fun and make some cool things while surviving. I have a lot of family members who have never had that option. What drives me is the opportunity to show other Black & Brown folks that we can make some of our own options. The way I know to do that is by exposing folks to different art things they can try. I haven’t had a lot of options myself due to my disabilities but I sure as hell can share the ones, I have access to. Yeah, I love to open a box and rip the plastic off new art supplies. I also enjoy collecting random things I find while walking my dog or riding my bike. A comb here, a kids flip flop there, a Uline inventory book from an abandoned mailbox anywhere… For me it’s about collecting random things for when the ideas find me. I want to pass that skill onto other folks. Regardless of whether or not I know for sure art is my passion, it has saved my life many times. Maybe I can help it save someone else’s.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

When I describe the creative process of a long-form project to my students I don’t give it a super favorable edit. I break it down into 95-5.
95 % of the project is absolute and utter brain melting hell. A ton of insecurity and constant second guessing yourself. The project will change form about 8 times with the first and last attempt looking damn near identical. But still not quite what you pictured in your head. That 95% includes a really messed up sleep schedule and just a lot of sleepless nights, period. It’s forgetting to eat and then eating yourself too full to keep working. It’s pushing deadlines. It’s hating everything you make and wondering why you’re not better at this. It’s not having enough energy to hang out with friends. It’s falling behind on all the reality TV you follow religiously. It’s not finding out that your favorite character got killed off on Grey’s Anatomy until someone spoils it on twitter. It’s getting grossed out by your own stench and realizing you skipped one too many baths. It’s how did this paint manage to get on every surface. It’s what’s that sticky spot on my computer screen. It’s how did I run out of my favorite pencils and why does Amazon say I won’t get a fresh box until OCTOBER?!?!?! It’s crying because of all the trauma and emotions the project is bringing up. It’s uncertainty of if anyone will even understand what you’re trying to communicate with the piece. It’s the cost to ship it wherever it needs to go!
95% is enough to throw you into a kind of depression for a while during and after wondering if you’ll ever be able to top what you’re working on.
Then there’s that 5%. When it’s all done and you get to step back and say holy shit I MADE DIS WIT MINE HANDS CONNECTED TO DIS BODY THAT HOLDS MINE BRAIN!?!?
That 5% is that moment when you’re hand mixing a color and it turns out even more vibrant thaN your acrylic paint recipe book said it would. It’s oh shoot look at that sexy line I just made, “OKAY LINE!” It’s checking in with your doggo asking “how does this look” and taking the silence as “MOM you’re a genius and no one has ever arted like you art.” It’s that shower you take when it’s all done and you know you can sleep in the next day because seriously it’s ALL DONE. It’s seeing that flicker of recognition in an outside viewers eye, that moment when you know they GET it. It’s that tiny scratching you feel in the back of your brain that seems to be saying “hmmm what if next time you…?”
That 5% makes you just unhinged enough to go through that 95% over and over and over and over again.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.froonfleekproductions.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/KadaziaSparkles
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/KadaziaSparkles
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/KadaziaSparkles
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@donebydazia
• Other: www.patreon.com/KadaziaSparkles

Image Credits
Me, myself, and I.