Blind artists and a unique vision

Matilda Battersby 

The art critic John Berger’s seminal book Ways of Seeing is required reading for art students. But what if you can’t see? Or if the way you see is quite literally different from the way other people do?

New York-based artist Daniel Arsham was born colour-blind. So it follows that his chosen palette is varying shades of monochrome. But with the help of new technology, he’s started seeing more colours and is staging his very first exhibition featuring brighter hues as a result of the markedly different way he has begun to view the world.

“Wearing these glasses [made by EnChroma], I’m able to see a wider range of colour. What the glasses do is they artificially expand the colour spectrum in the wavelengths that I am missing. And hence it has impacted my options for palette,” he said.

 “So it’s not to say I will continue making all of my work in these vibrant hues; it’s just that it’s expanded the potential.”

You can see the impact failing sight has had on major artists from Van Gogh to Monet. It is hard to even imagine the emotional struggle, the potential loss or diminishment of eyesight would have on someone who looks at things for a living. But Arsham is inspired by one of his artist friends who went blind after being hit by a truck while cycling in New York City.

“A very good friend of mine, and somebody who’s worked in my studio for many years, was blinded completely in an accident six years ago. Her name is Emilie Gossiaux and she is an artist and she works in the studio every day,” Arsham says. “Being around her and seeing how she’s sort of brought the lack of sight into her work in really interesting ways has kind of further eliminated, for me, how this idea of sight and how individual perception really can impact how one sees my work, and art in general.”

Like Arsham, Gossiaux uses new technology to assist her sight. It is called a BrainPort Vision Device and it relays visual information from a camera through her tongue to the visual receptors in the brain. She is a wonderful ceramicist and sculptor, but has recently begun using the futuristic tech device to do what she did before her accident: put pencil to paper.

 “I actually used (the BrainPort Vision Device) to draw,” Gossiaux said in a recent interview. “Every weekend, I have all this time to myself so I set up a table with a gigantic, bright spotlight and I would draw in my 18X24 drawing pad. I would just draw there for hours, learning how to use it. Whatever images I had in my mind, I would sketch it, like doodles. That was always the way I enjoyed drawing.”

New York seems to be the place to be a visually impaired artist. Another up-and-coming name on the Manhattan block is Neil Harbisson, whose dedication to using a computer that corrects his colour blindness is such that he had a microchip inserted into his skull. He has an antenna curving up from the base of his neck over his head, ending in a device at the centre of his forehead that acts as a third eye. He has nicknamed the device his “eyeborg” and refers to himself as the world’s first cyborg artist. — The Independent