Visualizing the Invisible
Thesis post IX
I went to Bobst Library to further my research on invisible disability, art and disability, and adhd. I found many books on pedagogical methods for teaching someone with adhd, and using art therapy to facilitate learning in children with disabilities, I found very little on artists empowering themselves through disability, but those centered around physical disability. I couldn’t find resources that would help me make things work for myself. Most of the books on learning disabilities were for teachers or parents to figure out how to deal with their problematic children. This gaping void of books for people with learning disabilities to help themselves illustrated a toxic narrative:
Adults with learning disabilities are overlooked
The narrative of learning disability is that of passivity- it is something for others to deal with, but not something for the disabled to understand themselves.
This might be why the phrase “learning disability” to describe ADHD doesn’t sit right with me. It suggests that the disorder impacts only the narrow sliver of learning related functioning, rather than weaving itself insidiously through Plus, I’m really good at learning. I’m a learning machine, someone sneezes on me and I learn a lesson from that. Perhaps the label “learning disability” comes from the fact that ADHD is just the most inconvenient to others in a school setting? Something to think about.
I thought that walking through the stacks in Bobst would help my research by allowing me to stumble upon content I hadn’t considered and wouldn’t otherwise know how to google, but the real epiphany came from the lack of resources. There’s nothing wrong about having a lot of resources for parents and teachers to help a child with ADHD. The only books I’ve ever seen my mom purchase were about raising a gifted, but struggling child. We have dozens of these books, with names like Smart but Scattered Teens. I never read these books, they weren’t for me. They became these strange meta props sitting on the coffee table and staircase, revealing the contents of my brain to any stranger who read the cover. Even though I never read them, I’m sure I have them to thank for some level of my success. Or at at the least, they are evidence that my mom believed in me enough to want to figure me out. I wouldn’t be where I am without her. Time did nothing more than turn a smart but scattered girl into a smart but scattered woman.
One of the books I found at Bobst, Issues and Approaches to Art for Students with Special needs[1] has a chapter called A Disability Aesthetic, Inclusion, and Art Education, written by Doug Blandy. The phrase “disability aesthetic” caught my attention, because I’ve been reflecting on how hard I tried to hide my disability because of shame. Shame is not a word I’m comfortable with. I don’t think of myself as someone burdened by shame. I’ve come to understand that their are tiers of shame, and one of the reasons I pursued body image and society as my thesis for so long is because body shame was something I was comfortable discussing. I liked the idea of being vulnerable in my project, and for me and the specific relationship I have with my body, it was a comfortable shame to discuss. It was a shame I had somewhat overcome, something that seemed vulnerable but I still had complete control over. I might get the benefit of my audience feeling that I was being vulnerable without fully opening myself up. That’s not to say that for someone else, the topic wouldn’t require deep vulnerability for them, but just from where I am at this moment in my life, I wasn’t freeing myself of any burden, or being sincerely vulnerable. What I’m really hiding is the disfunction and lack of acceptance of my own mind. The aforementioned book discussed disability aesthetic, speaking about performance artist Cheryl Wade. She said that the aesthetic tell stories of those with disabilities, “where we came from, where we’re going, how we got here.”(Blandy, 35) It is art that “take us out of isolation… Art that embraces every complex part of who we are, alone and together, in this horrifying and exquisite journey.”
I cautiously, and unknowingly, worked this concept of disability aesthetic into my final project for Designing the Absurd. When Pedro showed us examples of wearables in class, he included artists who created prosthetics that called attention to themselves instead of aiming to blend in like the wearer is not wearing a prosthetic at all. I embraced this concept when creating the Pill Popper.
The pill inside is one of my ADHD medications. For class I colored the label with white paint so nobody would know my business. But, this was a piece designed for myself, custom fit to me, and through that, a message to others like me. The more covert my medicine, the more I can hide it from others, the more likely I will forget to take it. The point here is not just to be loud and to destigmatize the use of medication, but it is a message that the mechanisms we use to hide ourselves also harm us. What do you lose by trying so hard to seem normal? Hiding begets hiding. You hide that you take medicine, then you struggle through a 2.5 hour class to keep yourself from jiggling your leg because you are crawling out of your skin sitting there.
My aesthetic is not cold and minimalist. It is loud, warm, a little cheeky. In this case, good design was not to blend in seamlessly. I didn’t know it at the time, but this project was the first, albeit gentle, step towards empowering myself, living more openly and honestly, and taking up space in a way I am still not yet comfortable with.
The trouble about disability aesthetic, for my purposes, is how focused it is on physical disability. I don’t know yet how to find the “aesthetic” in something invisible. As I untangle the knots I created in my thesis journey, I see that strangely enough, my fixation for my project was initially on the physical. I was looking for problems with my body to discuss. Maybe, I was exploding with the need to explore my struggles, but couldn’t locate them because they are invisible. So instead I tried to externalize them in the body. My next challenge is visualizing the invisible, tanging the untangible.
1Nyman, Andra L., and Anne M. Jenkins. Issues and Approaches to Art for Students with Special Needs. The National Art Education Association, 1999.