An Artist Who Has Something in Common With Her Subjects

Style|An Artist Who Has Something in Common With Her Subjects

On the evening in early November when I met the artist Rachel Handlin at White Columns, the prestigious nonprofit gallery in the West Village, she immediately outstretched her arms.

“I’m a hugger,” she said. “You’re so cute,” she added.

I thanked her and replied that she was cute, too.

“You’re cute,” she said. “I’m beautiful, actually.”

Ms. Handlin, 29, was almost finished installing her first solo show, “strangers are friends I haven’t met yet.” Like the blue line of cyanotype images tracing the rooms where her photos, sculptures and video works are displayed, the show “connects the community who didn’t know it,” she explained. “It is a community through the image.”

That community is composed of roughly two dozen people with Down syndrome across the globe who have graduated from two- or four-year colleges — like Ms. Handlin herself, who holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts. In May, after graduating with a master’s in fine arts from Pratt Institute, Ms. Handlin became the first person with Down syndrome to receive a master's degree, she and her family believe.

For five years, she and her mother, Laura Handlin, who is her aide and studio assistant, traveled to far-flung places like Peru, Australia and Spain to take her peers’ portraits. “I just met them all on Facebook,” Ms. Handlin said.

As she surveyed her work, Ms. Handlin recited the biographies of some of her subjects — like the Spanish actor and disability activist Pablo Pineda and the Missouri-based chocolatier Adam DeBacker — pausing occasionally to glance at the wall text.