The visual arts: Opening windows to the contemporary world for disabled artists

Learning to read and see the world of disabled artists

For the past 30 years I have engaged in the visual art as a unique form of communication and thought.In the early 1990s, I became involved in developing visual arts programs in early childhood education in Singapore. Initially, I mainly taught expatriate children during enrichment classes in expatriate clubs and as a regular educator in an international school. I used visual arts to create a connection to their ethnic cultures and as a communication mechanism. Towards the end 1990s, arts in Singapore found greater prominence. In January 2000, a Down syndrome organisation in Singapore invited me to conduct a series of art workshops for teenagers with Down syndrome. It was a time when there was a growing social awareness and acceptance of individuals with cognitive disabilities in Singapore. I was happy to volunteer my services. When it came to painting in the first art workshop, most of the participants stared blankly at their canvasses. They had no physical problems in using materials but there was a lack of ideas about what they could paint. As I was unable to interest them in the activities, I told them in desperation that they could paint anything, even “A for Apple”. This was an instruction that these young artists understood. Dutifully, they painted large and colourful trees with giant apples. I realised that my “A for apple” comment was something they understood within the context of their school literacy experiences.

Intuitively, I knew that I could have done more at this first art workshop. Thee experiences left me with the question: “How can I motivate these young individuals and help them to release their voices?” With another workshop planned for this group a month later, I decided to investigate whether there were other experiences in these young adolescents’ personal and social contexts through which I could motivate them to engage in art activities. In the time preceding the second workshop, I observed these same young participants during their rehearsal for a drama production. I witnessed their emotional connections with each other and saw how they took on their roles and characters in the play. I took photos of these moments. In the following art session, I showed these same young people photos that I had taken during their rehearsal. This sharing of the photos engendered great enthusiasm and increased their motivation about what they could paint. 

During the second workshop As the participants took up their paintbrushes, they used my photos to bring their stage characters to life on their canvasses.As each artist gave individual meaning to their art, I learned the different ways these individuals perceived their social experiences. Through visual arts, these young artists relived their roles as kings and lion dancers and created a world in which they were in charge. The transition, from a world where the traditional spoken word was prevalent, to a symbolic world where emotional experiences with their world were central, was remarkable. The photos I had taken, had encouraged the participants to relive their individual experiences. The artworks were their stories, and created a visual world where they were the authors. 

It were these experiences that brought my first international oral presentation during the world Down syndrome Conference held in Singapore in 2004. Over the years  I raised the opportunities of the visual arts in learning the lives of disabled artists, their thoughts about self, emotions about others and love. It was based on my early experiences, in which I had learnt, how in a world dominated by fast-paced information exchange, the visual arts stand as a formidable and indispensable language of communicationthat encourages communication of feelings, thoughts and experiences. The you adolescents artworks moved beyond the confines of the spoken and written words, whereby images were not only artistic expressions but also aesthetic experiences that possessed the unique ability to convey emotions, stories, and complex ideas, making them an essential component of effective communication. The effect of my first experience with the art making of this group of young adolescents with Down syndrome was what Vygotsky would describe as “a dramatic collision” (Veresov, 2007, 2010). Unknowingly, this was also my first introduction to the phenomenon of perezhivanie (Vygotsky, 1934/1994).

Through this visual arts encounter, and the many other experiences that followed, I was able to enter the lives of many young disabled persons  and became part of their meaning-making processes. By moving into their world, I was able to learn and make sense of what mattered most to them. I learnt to understand the deeper essence of this transformation, and each artwork introduces me time again to the social semiotic relationship of artist and audience.  I recognised how emotions about our lived experiences are a source of motivation that shapes our perception of the world. What appeared to be ordinary art experiences became extra-ordinary representations of their lived experiences.