The Fitchburg State University Humanities Department presents its second exhibition of the academic year, featuring artist Bill Porter.
The exhibition, titled “What We Learn to Believe” is on display through December 20 at the Hammond Art Gallery, located in Hammond Hall, 160 Pearl Street.
There will be an opening reception at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29 at the gallery. The exhibit starts on Monday, Oct. 26. Admission is free and open to the public.
Porter is a research-driven, multidisciplinary artist working primarily in painting, installation, sound, and time-based media. His work critically examines how inherited stories, cultural assumptions, and societal narratives acquire authority and shape our understanding of truth. Drawing heavily from his personal background, Porter brings his Irish immigrant father’s stories of Christianity and rural Donegal into dialogue with the cartoons, comics, and picture books of his American childhood — recontextualizing these familiar materials to explore the space between personal memory and collective belief.
As a blind artist with low vision, Porter centers his lived experience and engagement with the broader blind and low vision community to interrogate the cultural construction of disability. His practice challenges the systems that reinforce ableist assumptions, questioning who holds the authority to define accessibility, perception, and narrative. By blending humor with rigorous inquiry, Porter invites audiences to reexamine the stories they inherit, the hidden biases within them, and what they ultimately choose to accept as self-evident.