Discover how self-published zines have been used to share individual expriences of disability and disabled identity.

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Zines Forever! DIY Publications and Disability Justice, a Display at Wellcome Collection. Gallery Photo: Benjamin Gilbert

Zines Forever! celebrates the role that zines play in sharing and shaping experiences of disability and identity. Zines are self-published booklets, produced in small numbers and not for profit, which can be made from just a single sheet of paper.

This display shows some of the zines created by disabled zine-makers which are part of a growing collection held by Wellcome Collection. They capture the complex, sometimes messy, feelings around being, or becoming, disabled and connect to zines’ longer history as a tool of activism. Creative and accessible, these zines communicate emotions ranging from grief, exhaustion and anger to humour, joy and solidarity.

Disability Justice is a movement led by disabled activists, mostly queer people of colour, which identifies disability and ableism as part of wider systems of oppression. It is central to many of the zines on display. Collectively, they show how the making and sharing of zines can further disabled community building, mutual support and political resistance.

The zines in this display present people’s firsthand, lived-experiences.

Some zines include references to ableism, child abuse, suicide, swearing, racism, death and bereavement, and medically inflicted harm. Some of the zines contain sexually explicit content. 

Where appropriate content notices will be indicated on the labels. If you would like further information, please speak to a member of staff.

There are British Sign Language interpretation videos for film and audio works in this display.

There are digital, enlargeable versions of most of the zines on the iPads throughout the display.

We run regular Audio Described tours for this display.

Upcoming dates are on the events panel outside the gallery, and on our website.

If you would like live Audio Description for your visit today, please speak to a member of staff.

Scan the QR code on your phone to access all exhibition texts in screen-readable formats.

You are invited to handle and read the zines in this display.

Take a seat wherever you feel comfortable.

Return them to their place once you are finished, please do not take the zines away with you.

There are digital, enlargeable versions of most of the zines on the iPads throughout the space.

If you need any further support, please ask a member of staff.

Our collections catalogue on our website provides information on many more zines in our collection and how to access them in the library.

We have also published articles on our Stories page about zines, and we have a regular zine- making workshop called ‘Zine Club’ that is held on-site. Discover more at wellcomecollection.org.

Zines resist a single definition. Broadly, a zine is a DIY publication, produced in small numbers and not for profit. They can vary in content, form, material, authorship, and distribution. Zines with contributions from multiple people might be known as a “compzine” for example, or an autobiographical zine a ‘perzine’.

Zines create and document DIY subcultures and communities that are centred around making and sharing. These can reflect any number of overlapping and intersecting identities and interests, from music fandoms to radical politics to disability.

Here, you can read a selection of zines about zines by zine makers. They explore various ideas about what zines are and, perhaps more importantly, what they do for their makers and readers.

Prompts for zine making for disability & chronic illness

Vicky Stevenson and Pen Fight 2019, England

One-sheet black and white riso-printed zine

People can experience barriers to making art and other creative practices due to the cost, time and perceived skill required. Zine making is a more accessible pursuit with its low-cost materials and DIY aesthetics. In this short stop motion film, Manchester-based artist and zine maker Seleena Laverne Daye shows how to make a simple one-page zine with just a pencil, paper and scissors.

Hello, I’m Seleena and I’m going to show you how to make a one-page zine.

A zine is basically a self-published magazine that can be about anything and made by just about anyone.

You will need paper, scissors and a pen. First of all, fold the paper in half lengthways. Then in half again.

Unfold and then fold the outside edges in towards the middle.

Unfold the paper fully and then fold in half widthways.

Then take your scissors and cut a line down

Fold in half lengthways again and then pull the opposite edges away and fold it into a book shape.

And now all you have to do is fill your zine with all your great ideas.

And there you go. There you have a one-page zine.

Working on my PhD with Wellcome Collection’s zines, people were always asking me to define what a zine was. I borrowed from contemporary visualisations of the Autistic spectrum as a circle or colour wheel, divided into different traits or experiences that people might have to a greater or lesser extent.

I created a ‘zine spectrum’ which illustrates some of the values, practices and qualities that make something a zine. Instead of a straight line with ‘zine’ and ‘not a zine’ at either end, different DIY publications can be profiled on this colour wheel. This offers a way of talking about what a zine is without needing a fixed definition, and helps make sense of zines within a wider global landscape and histories of self-publishing.

Our collections aim to contribute to a world where everyone’s experience of health matters. Historically, our collecting practices were centred on medical or professional perspectives. Today we’ve shifted our focus to lived experiences of health, particularly of those who continue to be silenced or marginalised within our collections.

Since 2016, we have started collecting zines as part of this diversification of voices. Often produced in small runs and shared through informal networks, usually with personal and challenging content, zines have not been made with collections in mind. 

Our traditional methods of collecting and cataloguing have been changed by the ethos of the zine community. It has challenged us to be more ethical in our approaches which starts by interacting with zine makers and being open about how we care for their stories.

Our library preserves zines so researchers can explore personal experiences and alternative sites of knowledge that they might not otherwise expect to find, today and in the future.

Nicola Cook, Melanie Grant and Loesja Vigour, co-founders of the Wellcome Collection zine collection.

Swallow it whole: a zine about PrEP for women

Did it help? Getting an autism diagnosis in early middle age

It was mid-lockdown. We’d just started our research about radical mental health zines. Influenced by the Mad Pride movement which reclaims the word ‘Mad’ to refer to lived experiences of mental ill-health, neurodiversity, psychosocial disability or other conditions that have been psychiatrised by the medical profession, we called them ‘Madzines’.

We were figuring out how to approach our research in ways that would mirror both zine culture and Mad culture. We wanted to spend time with Madzines, to think ‘with’, not just ‘about’ them, to set them moving and see what they might do. After one early chat, Jill got out paper, pens, glue and a needle and thread, and began to stitch some thoughts together. She envisaged our DIY methodology as a quilt, influenced by the idea of research as ‘bricolage’ and by the ‘seamfulness’ of zines.

Double-sided collaged zine with stitch Courtesy of Madzines

One-sheet A4 zine, pencil drawing on paper

I was looking for potential zine workshop collage material when I found the original image. A brown woman slouched and pondering life: I saw myself. Reflection is a core element of my everyday life as a PhD researcher, and I wanted to capture my tiredness in a zine. Zines have allowed me to accessibly log and collect thoughts and feelings that may not be considered as conventionally academic, but the knowledges they hold and stories they tell are, in my opinion, infinitely more valuable. Here I expressed how fatigued my Long Covid, my ADHD, and my PhD can make me.

A woman leaning wistfully on a large cushion

Disability Justice activist Stacey Park Milbern coined the term ‘crip doulaing’ to describe the ways that disabled people offer support to others through the experience of becoming or being disabled. This draws on ideas of a ‘doula’ as a non-medical guide offering practical and emotional support through major life changes such as pregnancy, childbirth or end of life care.

The term ‘crip’ is used by some disabled people to describe themselves. Reclaimed from a historic and derogatory term used to describe disabled people, ‘crip’ can be used to identify disability as a political position and a site of community – expressing pride and resistance against ableism and intersecting systems of oppression.

Some of the practices of crip doulaing are visible in these zines: in the direct advice and resources Fiona Robertson offers, or how the contributions to Disgender evoke the entwined feelings of being trans and disabled.

Your Life Is Not Over: A Book Of Apocalypses And How To Survive Them

A disability manifesto: thoughts on crip value in a capitalist land

US-based artist E.T. Russian created ‘Ring of Fire’ between 1996 and 1999 after acquiring a disability in an accident as a young adult. Through writing, images, poetry and erotica, the zine explores a range of topics from E.T.’s life during this period across disability, politics, gender and sexuality. 

In 2014, E.T. published an anthology version of ‘Ring of Fire’, adding their reflections on the original zines, along with essays and interviews with other Disability Justice activists and artists. Looking back, E.T. writes:

“When I first wrote ‘Ring of Fire’ I was working out so much about my disability, my sexuality and gender … Really, I think that I was trying to explain it to myself and it just happened to be helpful to other people who were also new to disability as a concept.”

Due to their age, these original copies of ‘Ring of Fire’ have been put in cases to protect them. You can find most of the content of the zine in the Anthology or on digital versions on the iPad to the left.

E.T. Russian, published by Left Bank Books 2014, United States

Includes sexually explicit content and references to ableism, medically inflicted harm, death and bereavement.

Commissioned for this display, this animation collages images from the original ‘Ring of Fire’ alongside new drawings. It pays homage to friends, mentors and ancestors from the Disability Justice movement and arts community, many of whom contributed to the Ring of Fire Anthology and who have recently died. They are depicted here in moments of intimacy, care and relation between disabled people, weaving together memory and fantasy. The film includes an audio-described narration and soundscape which can be listened to on headphones.

A black and white animation made of ink drawings and collaged images from the original Ring of Fire zines and Anthology.

Clouds float above the Olympic Mountains. A vagina cloud shape becomes a spraying skunk. A leaf with a scar along its spine.

The mountains are textured like pills in blister packs.

The undammed Lower Elwha River flows below, surrounded by evergreen forest.

Aditya, a cyclist sporting shades and a sleek helmet, grips the pedals of a recumbent hand cycle, racing confidently along the river.

Resting her head against his, Char dances next to him in her wheelchair. Her face tilts gently upwards, her arm outstretched, arching to the sky.

Above her, a block print of Wobbly Dance founders, Eric and Yulia, in conversation with each other in their power wheelchairs.

Below them, a one-legged dancer, Homer Avila, tumbles in relation to the earth.

In the centre of a black screen, a bundle of rope forms an infinity symbol.

Peta’s face peeks out mischievously from a bunch of kale and beets.

Hir eyes glint behind thick glasses, hir goatee and lip piercing, smiling.

Peta kneeling in a black hoodie and Afro-Caribbean flag hat, weeds a flower bed full of knives.

I’m in my wheelchair, watering the next bed.

Wiley, the dog with white fur and soft black ears, lounges, belly exposed.

Bookshelves and record albums surround us.

Clipped drawings of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s trolley accident and Olympic medallist Wilma Rudolph, hang out with us in the garden.

Two studded leather cock rings connected form an infinity symbol

Aditya, in his power chair, wields a camera photographing a crowded protest. He wears a keffiyeh.

His phone, water bottle and medications carabinered to the side of his armrest.

The crowd holds a banner with watermelons and a dove holding an olive branch in its beak.

Overlooking the scene, a row of police officers, drawn in outline only, like a row of teeth. Batons in hand, faces hidden behind police helmets.

Above surveillant eyes with furrowed brows.

Below, a single eye. In its pupil, a muscular Tom of Finland model flexes.

One protester with locks holds a Palestinian

flag. A child holds a sign of a heart with wings. A Hasidic Jewish man in a fur hat and prayer shawl flanks a speaker in hijab, raising a megaphone to the sky, leading a chant.

A pair of hairy legs descend from above. One has a wooden peg leg, the other a combat boot.

Amidst the protest, a man sits holding a fake leg. He is bent over worshiping it with his mouth.

An arm from above presses his face into the leg. ‘Shine my foot’, it commands.

A snake eating its tail creates an infinity symbol.

A patient lays unconscious in a hospital bed, his chest and legs uncovered.

He is prodded by a team of doctors in white coats surrounding him. Care is absent from their demeanour. The attending doctor is ‘teaching’ his residents. He pulls the patient’s gown away, applying a stethoscope to the chest. A resident stands by, clipboard in hand.

Two gargoyles apparate at either end of the bed, hissing and snarling protectively. Pale flames wreathe their wings and fangs.

Artist Matuschka presides at the head of the bed, the right side of her chest flat, a scar and a circle with a line through it highlighting her mastectomy. A gauze bandage wraps around her head and neck, billowing around the patient.

Benda Bilili are illuminated by stage lights.

Guitarists and singers shred, some in wheelchairs, some with crutches, dressed in dapper suits and hats.

At the foot of the bed, the Venus de Milo bears witness. She is naked, highlighting the curve of her abdomen and breasts. Her arms are broken off. Rough stone.

Below her, the head of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, with her signature bob haircut, floats within a mirrored infinity room.

Polka dots reflect endlessly in her hair and the glass.

Next to the bed, painter Chuck Close sits in his wheelchair. An arm splint positions his paintbrush securely. His left arm is raised, ready to make the first brushstroke.

A pair of handcuffs form an infinity symbol.

In the center, a dancer suspended upside down by rope.

Their long, dark hair falls toward the floor, their arms and hands outstretched.

Bondage ropes knot around their chest, hips and wheelchair.

The dancer is encircled by others, moving rhythmically. Everyone is feeling themselves and each other.

Thighs spread. Asses ride the air. Hands connect in prayer. Curls toss.

The vibes are right, and they are riding the wave.

One dancer in a sexy handstand. Another kneeling.

Limbs missing. Pinup poses and fake legs. A removable showerhead. A commode.

Scantily clad. Power chairs and leather. Bikinis and scars flaunted.

A magnetic field diagram resembles an infinity symbol.

Flames rise from a burning hospital, smoke billowing up toward the sky.

Mama Cax, a fashion model and cancer survivor who passed away in 2019, poses in a bikini and sunglasses to the right of the fire.

She leans on a crutch, her left leg missing from the hip down. A long scar runs up her abdomen.

One hand on her bald head, her posture radiates power and confidence.

Kusama’s polka dots transition between realities from the blazing medical facility to Snoqualmie Falls, cascading down into clouds of vapor before flowing downstream.

At the base of the waterfall, a bathtub tap sprays water between the thighs of the naked torso.

In the clouds above, floats my friend, Disability Justice activist Stacy Park Milbern, who passed away in 2020, in a power chair wearing a backwards baseball cap.

And Homer Avila pirouettes on one leg and graceful circles through the aether.

A digital numeral 8 creates an infinity symbol.

What do you do in bed? These zines challenge ideas about what we use our beds for, and about who can produce media, from where, and about what. For these zine makers, bed is more than a place where they sleep or have sex. Their zines are made from or about sick beds, whether at home or in hospital. These sick beds aren’t private spaces of recovery but are active places of cultural production and political participation.

The zines reveal complex feelings about bed – as a place of rest and comfort, and of pain and confinement; a place of solitude and loneliness, and of community and connection.

Includes references to medically inflicted harm.

A6 black and white zine with hand stitching

Feel free to use this bed to rest, read and reflect. Maximum four people. Please be respectful of others.

Being disabled is hard work. These zines reveal the physical, psychological and emotional effort involved in daily life, often alongside health conditions that may change or worsen over time. These challenges are deeply entwined with systemic and social barriers to accessing support and services, as well as hostile depictions of disabled people in the media.

The zine makers featured here invite us to broaden our understanding of work to include the giving and receiving of care between disabled people and their communities, grounded in the right to support. Zines can be central to building networks, used to share practical information, or act as catalysts for resistance, political activism and mutual aid.

Makers also explore how zines can provide ‘access’ as “a collective joy and offering we can give to each other”, in the words of Disability Justice activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

The work of being disabled: access and care

‘Dependant alarm’ refers to a device given to disabled people by their local councils, used to contact their caregiver when they need support. There is often very little information or support available for carers, and the labour involved in both receiving and delivering home care is often overlooked and ignored by policymakers and society at large.

Chloe became the primary caregiver for her mother who was going through a difficult period with her disability. The work was created both as a textile and a zine, documenting, processing and reflecting upon this time for herself and her mother.

If being disabled is work, some of this work is self-care. Sweet Thang zine, issue 06, features work by Black artists of marginalised genders on the theme of healing. The diverse contributions in this issue reflect notions of healing and self-care that reject commercialised self-care as a luxury or act of consumption.

Faced with systemic oppression and a lack of state support, disabled communities turn to activism and mutual aid – when two or more people work together to offer each other support – exchanging resources or services as needed. In the context of long histories of disability activism, this digital zine from the What Would a HIV Doula Do? Collective asks: what is the work of supporting an uprising?

In the UK, disabled people are entitled to access some financial support through systems such as Personal Independence Payments (PIP), Employment Support Allowance (ESA) or, in Scotland, Adult Disability Payment (ADP).

Applying for support through these systems places a burden of administrative and emotional work on disabled people, made worse by cuts in public services, restrictive barriers to access and the characterisation of claimants as ‘scroungers’ by different governments and in the media.

The zines here reflect on these experiences.

Since this zine was first published in 2018, Social Security has been devolved to the Scottish Government. This meant Scotland had a chance to redesign disability benefits. The new system here is similar in many ways, and radically different in others.

My old PIP award was given in two year increments, perpetually exhausting and futile as my health conditions are lifelong – when I was moved over to Adult Disability Payment, it was issued for 10 years, the maximum possible review period. I was believed.

I’ve reflected on what it means to reprint this zine. Six years later, following the Infected Blood compensation scheme, Post Office scandal, midway through a Covid inquiry – I wonder what would compensation for DWP harms look like?

Will we ever see justice for sanctions, deaths and institutional violence towards disabled people from austere UK Governments?

The audio narration for this work can be listened to using the headphones on this table. The countdown timer of the screen shows when the next narration will begin. It can also be listened to on your mobile device by scanning the QR code on this label.

There are also additional handling copies of the paper zine available on request. You can ask a member of staff for more information. 

The audio and transcript are available here.

In 'Embodied', Rae Lanzerotti, a genderqueer artist and zine maker based in San Francisco, explores their experience of sight-loss during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zines are often described as an accessible media, but accessible to who? Rae is interested in producing zines and artworks which are readily accessible to blind and partially sighted audiences. They have produced multiple versions of the comic zine 'Embodied', each time responding to feedback from the blind and low vision community.

This version of the zine is made with raised tactile images and braille, as well as an audio-described narration that can be listened to on headphones.

A6 black and white concertina zine, originals on swell paper with tyvek tape, adhesives, reproduced with 3D printed ink on Forex

Courtesy of the artist / Wellcome Collection, A146

Disabled activists, artists and media often focus on disabled joy and positivity in order to counter the commonplace negative framing of disability and disabled people. While these positive depictions are important, they can obscure how being and becoming disabled includes a complex range of emotions including grief, anger and exhaustion.

Zines can offer a space for their makers to explore and process difficult feelings. As well as serving as a creative outlet, they allow their makers to share the emotional aspects of disability in all its messiness, complexity and contradiction. Reading these zines can feel validating and build a sense of community and connection for disabled people.

Several of the zines here deal with challenging topics around loss: mourning a loss of ability or of a sense of self, the loss of spaces and community because they are inaccessible, and the loss of others.

Includes sexually explicit content and references suicide, child abuse and racism.

A blaze of candles on my cake: growing old when you’re bisexual, black and disabled

Sore loser: a chronic pain and illness zine on queer disabled grief

Etzali Hernández and Sandra Alland 2021, Scotland

Includes references to suicide, death and bereavement.

Believing: a zine about love and loss among the mad

A zine can be about anything. They can help communicate ideas, thoughts or feelings. There is no need for it to be perfect – just start making and see where you end up.

There is a template to help you make your own zine. You can find these on the table with pencils to get you started.

There are pens, scissors, glue and magazine cuttings available on request, please ask a member of staff.

You can take your zine home or leave it here for others to read.

We would like to thank the zine makers, artists, contributors, and internal and external colleagues who have generously shared their works, expertise and ideas, and contributed to the planning, delivery and ongoing development of the display.

Special thanks to Wellcome Collection colleagues Melanie Grant (Collections Development Lead) and Nicola Cook (Collections Information Librarian) who initially proposed this display, for lending their collections expertise, project consultation and direction.

Audiovisual: Ollie Isaac, Joshua McCrow, Ricardo Barbosa, Jeremy Bryans
Build: Exib
BSL Editor: Samuel Dore
BSL Presenter: Alexandra Shaw
BSL Monitor: Demaris Cooke
Conservator: Kath Knowles
Design: Martin McGrath Studio
Engagement Producer: Razia Jordan
Gallery Manager: Christian Kingham
Project Manager: Amy Higgitt, Annie Rolington
Registrar: Rowan De Saulles

Curated by Dr Lea Cooper and Adam Rose, Wellcome Collection.

Zines Forever! DIY Publishing and Disability Justice

1880-that-christine-sun-kim-and-thomas-mader

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1880 THAT, an exhibition by Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader at Wellcome Collection. Gallery Photo: Steven Pocock

1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader

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Zines Forever! DIY Publishing and Disability Justice digital guides

Exhibition text

Exhibition text

Other exhibition guides available

1880 THAT: Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader

Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights