![]() This was a way of understanding my possible path, but also of engaging with the larger blind and low-vision community.ĮMILIE L. That led to Vision Portraits: I wanted to engage in conversations with people who were active, creative artists and were either low-vision or completely blind, who were still making art and thriving as artists. My vision had deteriorated, and I was questioning how I would function as a filmmaker if I continued to lose vision. But after a while, that really started to get under my skin. Don’t ever say that in a pitch meeting.” I’d be like, OK, duly noted. Producers and fundraisers were like, “OK, so that’s why you’re walking so slowly on the streets of Cannes. We’re barely even talking about that now, but just imagine 12 years ago. This is before people were talking about access as part of the inclusion conversation. That was a more tumultuous emotional journey with my family, and it felt like a lot to reckon with in my work. ![]() So to be honest, I felt like I was grappling more with being Black and queer in my earlier work than I was with being low-vision. I’m Black and queer and was already making work about those aspects of my identity that were putting me in this realm where gatekeepers were thinking about my work as being, let’s just say, not commercial. RODNEY EVANS Because there is so much ableism in the industry, especially around vision, I was reluctant to come out as a low-vision filmmaker. But I do want to combine them, and ask each of you: How did you become a blind artist, or a low-vision artist? Or, if you prefer: what’s the first blind work of art you made? I think that’s enough description for this day and age.”ĪNDREW LELAND A standard question that interviewers put to artists is: how did you become an artist? And one of the most common questions blind people get is: how did you become blind? I don’t want to ask you either of those questions. Coklyat said, “I’m in my bedroom, on the floor, ’cause it just felt comfy.” Evans described his hair: “short twists on the top, shaven into a fade on the sides and in the back.” Gossiaux provided visual background: “I have the flag of the State of California hanging on the wall behind me it has a big brown grizzly bear on it that I really love.” Hamilton reported, simply, “I’m a Black woman. The conversation began with panelists describing themselves. Gossiaux is a visual artist and Bojana Coklyat’s work encompasses performance and filmmaking. All based in the New York metropolitan area, they work across disciplines: Rodney Evans is a filmmaker Kayla Hamilton is a dancer Emilie L. To explore these questions, Art in America convened a roundtable discussion with four blind and low-vision artists. Is blindness a central, generative force? Or an obstacle to be overcome? The blind or low-vision artist must engage with a related set of issues in the creation of their own work: Are the needs of a sighted audience different from those of a blind one? Should access for the blind be optional, available on a separate track or in the form of a touch tour, or is there an imperative to integrate it into the mainstream art-viewing experience? Working with minimal or no sight in a sight-dominated field, they must also contend with prejudice and low expectations, and decide how disability itself figures in their work, and their lives. Russian President Vladimir Putin 'Legalizes' Looting in Ukraine with Martial Law Decree Gossiaux Sculpts Tattoos and Dancing Dogs Observing by Touch, Blind Artist Emilie L. A good description for the blind, she argues, would incorporate both the historical context and playfulness found in the other two tracks. Kleege points out what any reader or writer of art criticism knows implicitly: this objectivity is a fiction. But the tour for the blind-particularly when it presents representational paintings-follows the established industry guidelines for Audio Description, offering an “objective” account, in minute detail, of what the painting shows and how its composition is arranged. The children’s tour encourages a playful, exploratory approach to apprehending an artwork. She finds that the mainstream audio tour, narrated largely by the museum’s curators, is rich with historical and technical descriptions of the works. Like a blind art-loving Goldilocks, Kleege decides to try all three. When she rents an audio tour, the little handheld device that MoMA provides presents Kleege with three options: there is one program produced for mainstream visitors, another for blind visitors, and a third for children. In her influential 2017 study More Than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art, Georgina Kleege, a blind writer and UC Berkeley professor, visits the Museum of Modern Art in New York to look at some paintings.
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