With ‘Art Museum From Bed,’ M Eilo Loans Sculptures to Disabled San Franciscans

If you’re a disabled San Franciscan who can’t make it to a museum, art can come to you thanks to Art Museum From Bed by M Eilo.

Eilo loans out interactive sculptures, or Sensation Models, that one can hug and cuddle. Most of them engage multiple senses. And if you accidentally drop your art piece, or your pet or child knocks it over, no problem. Eilo designed it with the realities of home display in mind.

Eilo is a disabled San Francisco artist who lives with autism and chronic illnesses, and their work centers disabled audiences. They’re known for using artificial intelligence to build computational prosthetics, wearable art pieces that perform social and bodily tasks like smiling or logging memories. They also run an online series called Art School From Bed, short videos about art history and technique specifically for other artists who are chronically ill.

Eilo has been making textile sculptures — from handheld to furniture-scale pieces — for nearly 20 years. To create art in the shape and texture of their chronic hemiplegic migraines, they began crocheting sofa-size sculptures in 2006. During the 2010s, they shifted to making Wearable Pillows, accessories that are both decorative and supportive of their body when passing through harsh and inaccessible spaces.

Two years ago, Eilo began experimenting with Sensation Models. Made from an assortment of reclaimed materials including used rope and unraveled knitwear, the semi-soft, semi-flexible, amorphous forms arose out of Eilo’s desire to get beyond pain scales that doctors often use. Like many, Eilo feels constrained by charts and questions such as, “On a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt?” Instead, they imagine alternative methods for expressing the sensations their body enjoys and endures. Lumpy purple tentacles and pink patchwork blobs feel much more expressive.

“When I started Sensation Models, I challenged myself to expand beyond my own body and make works for the homes, bodies and lives of my disabled neighbors across the Bay Area,” Eilo explains. From the beginning, the idea was to lend these pieces out. After they return to Eilo, they are cleaned and quarantined before they move to the next home.

Though Eilo previously experimented with loaning out and giving away pieces to low-income community members, the logistics in running Art Museum From Bed have been an unexpected challenge for someone with low spoons. It may seem simple enough to exchange a few emails, deliver a piece and pick it up again. But as they note, “It turns out this level of social coordination uses up a lot of energy!”

Sometimes borrowers come directly to them. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Eilo presented Sensation Models to a small group gathered for a Fully Tactile Art salon. Through intermittent public talks and a semi-annual gathering, the small tactile art consortium encourages local art that is first and foremost physically felt.

“I rarely have the opportunity to directly engage with creations,” says Jerry Kuns, Fully Tactile’s co-founder and accessibility consultant. Kuns is blind, and he notes that spoken or written descriptions are a poor substitute for the experience of feeling texture and shape.

“My perspective is that most art forms are multidimensional, and should be handled as well as viewed,” he adds, “in order to be appreciated and understood by the general public.”

By lending out work, Eilo turns borrowers into curators as they show the art to loved ones and encourage visitors to interact with the work in their homes. After all, they spend more time with Sensation Models than museumgoers passing through a gallery, which offers a chance to contemplate how they feel.

“Hosts have told me stories of how the sculptures map to their own disabled experiences,” Eilo says, “how a specific spike, arm or twisted section of a sculpture, when felt in their hands, made them feel more connected to specific parts of their body.”

And isn’t that the radical potential of evocative works, wherever we encounter them? Feeling more connected to ourselves, and others, may be the highest form of art appreciation.