Similarly, it is only from the experiences we have that we know that the chair we walk round is always the same chair despite the fact
that it is, effectively a mobile sculpture with infinitely different aspects.
The more I learned about blindness, the more I understood about seeing and its limitations and it soon became clear that if I was to
produce hybrid art that worked for both the sighted and the blind, I would need a blind guide. I was lucky enough to make contact with Constance Hill
who has been blind since birth and who helped me throughout. She, along with a lot of other blind and severely sight-impaired people helped me to sort
through my false perceptions-there are substantial differences between those who have never seen and those who lost their sight. In general the latter
learn Braille less easily, but they have visual memory and are able, therefore, to interpret e.g. outlines of the human figure etched into a surface.
Experiences with showing the work in Austria, Switzerland, Ethiopia and England have shown that my conjecture that communication would take place between
the blind and the sighted in the exhibition context has proved valid. There have also been amusing discoveries of my own culture specific thought patterns.
So when the works were shown in Ethiopia, I failed to realize beforehand that snow-related pictures would fail to link up with tactile experiences and
that the last thing an Ethiopian woman is likely to be interested in is a ‘permanent wave.’ |
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The Braille words I integrated into the picture surface are scaled up and it has been my experience that those people who have a strong
drive to be in charge of their own lives and to experience as much as possible as independently as they are able, quickly adapt to the unusual use of
their writing and get pleasure out of the process. Just the same as a sighted person would in an art
situation. |
