Art about blindness?

January 23, 2011 7:47 AM

Do you know of any interesting examples of visual art that focus on the experience of blindness? It seems to me that it would be an interesting paradox to make a visual statement about a lack of seeing.
posted by mortaddams to Society & Culture (13 answers total)

More generally about disability, but Katerie Gladdys did a piece called Augmented that could easily be extrapolated to be about blindness. The piece explores a sound map of a home using tactile features. There's no direct link, but here is her website. Click the "Work" label at the top left. It currently goes right to this piece, but if it doesn't, you can click the title of the piece at the bottom of the page.
posted by BlooPen at 8:23 AM on January 23, 2011

I always thought braille tattoos were kind of interesting.
posted by ttyn at 8:44 AM on January 23, 2011

The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati has a piece called The Sensory Elephant that is targeted at children with visual impairments (as well as encouraging others to experience the work through other senses besides sight).
posted by mmascolino at 8:49 AM on January 23, 2011

The children's book The Black Book of Colors, by Menena Cottin, Rosana Faria, and Elisa Amado. Your library probably has a copy.
posted by johnofjack at 9:16 AM on January 23, 2011

Sophie Calle interviewed blind people and asked them what was beautiful to them : http://cristinamonteiro.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/8/
posted by Sully at 9:16 AM on January 23, 2011

Came in to recommend The Black Book of Colors as well. Very cool book.

Interesting question!
posted by wwartorff at 9:43 AM on January 23, 2011

I was profoundly moved by a video piece "Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See" by Javier Tellez. Six blind New Yorkers are invited to walk forward, one at a time, not knowing what to expect, and they encounter an elephant. The variety of reactions - fear, curiosity, puzzlement, awe, tenderness - is amazing, and I'm actually getting a little choked up thinking about it.

Here's an article that does a better job at describing that I can.
posted by violinflu at 9:49 AM on January 23, 2011

(This is related, but not exactly what you're looking for.) There is an artist in Tucson named David Tineo who has been progressively losing his sight over the years. There doesn't seem to be a lot of info, but here are a few articles about him. A friend of mine actually has a couple of Tineo's pieces up in his living room- he framed the canvases by 'feel' as well which adds to the uniqueness.
posted by palacewalls at 10:28 AM on January 23, 2011

Alice Wingwall is a photographer who steadily became blind and documented this change in her work.
posted by gyusan at 11:11 AM on January 23, 2011

Metafilter has some stuff for you.
posted by zoinks at 1:50 PM on January 23, 2011

There's a site 'By, for and about blind and visually-impaired photographers ', and an interesting looking movie:

http://blog.blindphotographers.org/anela-da-alma/
posted by jenmakes at 1:50 PM on January 23, 2011

This isn't what you asked for, since I don't think you can really call it visual art, but what about Dialog in the Dark?
posted by Violet Hour at 7:23 PM on January 23, 2011

not technically blindness, but Chuck Close suffers from face blindness, which makes it all the more interesting that he paints portraits. There was a radiolab episode (ref here) that talked about it.
posted by Chris4d at 11:12 AM on January 25, 2011