Disability
It’s hard to define what disability is without first agreeing what is normal.
Haw a go and see what you come up with.
Here are some art resources to help you explore the impact of disability.
Alexa Wright After Image
Alexa Wright is London-based artist working across photography, video, and interactive installation. In the late 1990s she became known for After Image, an award-winning series of photographs of people with phantom limbs. Since then, much of her practice has involved building reciprocal relationships with people with mental/physical differences, medical conditions and, most recently, with people in prison. As well as being beneficial for participants this way of working enables Alexa to gather personal accounts that intimately and empathetically address questions of human identity, otherness and vulnerability. (text from her website)
Take a look at her photos of people who are living life after a limb amputation.
Jason Wilsher-Mills Read more about his work
I was born and raised in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in 1969. I grew up in a large working-class family, on council estates. I fell ill with chicken pox in 1980, when I was 11 years old, with the virus attacking my central nervous system, causing me to be confined to a wheelchair. This experience has been pivotal in my own creative practice, as my work reflects the stories relating to my disability, class, family, activism and popular culture, through large sculptures, augmented and virtual reality, along with digital painting.
Here are some photos I took of his work at his exhibition ‘Jason and the Adventures of 254’, at the Wellcome Collection.
Rembrant’s Senses
We rely on our senses. When they are impaired our ability to navigate the world and our quality of life is impacted.
Rembrandt’s earliest known paintings depict the five senses. He painted these pictures aged 18 while living in Leiden in the Netherlands.
These are my photos of the exhibition at the Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. Read more about the pictures.
The whereabouts of his fifth painting depicting taste is unknown.
What picture might you chose to depict the sense of taste?
This is my choice:
Taste and smell.
Losing your sense of taste became more commonly discussed during the COVID pandemic when it was often the first and sometimes only symptom of infection with the virus.
The senses of taste and smell are interrelated.
Read this blog to learn more about what it is like to live with anosmia (no sense of smell).
Did you know William Wordsworth suffered from anosmia as he had Kallmann Syndrome?
Smelling salts are usually associated with healing, but Patrick Suskind’s novel, Perfume, the story of a murderer provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell.
Use these links to explore resources about the loss of sight and hearing.
Visual Impairment
Hearing Loss
Synaesthesia
We usually think of sense disability in terms of loss. Synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulationof one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
The earliest recorded case of synaesthesia is attributed to an academic and philosopher John Locke,who, in 1690, made a report about a blind man who said he experienced the colour scarlet when he heard the sound of a trumpet.
This picture was been short listed for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2019. It is a representation of the phenomenon of Synaesthesia as experienced by the artist’s partner.
Idioms
There are some interesting English idioms relating to the senses. What meaning do they convey?
Sight:
In the blink of an eye
Out of sight, out of mind
The apple of my eye
To see things eye to eye
To turn a blind eye
Hearing:
Ears are burning
Nothing between your ears
Out on your ear
To bend someone’s ear
To keep your ear to the ground
Smell:
To follow your nose
To smell a rat
To sniff around/out
To turn your nose up at something
Under someone’s nose
Taste:
A bad taste in your mouth
An acquired taste
In poor taste
To give someone a taste of their own medicine
To taste blood
Touch:
Touch wood
To hit a nerve
To keep in touch
To touch base
Touch-and-go
Page created 2019 updated 2024