What? A De'VIA Piece by Benjamin Vess

I came across an article over at DeafNation and there was a part of it that hit me: ‘Schertz admits getting artists to showcase their work wasn’t easy. Many artists, she said, didn’t want to show their private pieces. Pressing that a good number of people wanted to see artwork of the Deaf experience, many artists confessed much of their private pieces was ‘angry art’.

‘Not angry art,’ Schertz insisted. ‘It’s real. Real art.’” (“Deaf History through Art: De’VIA Revisited after 15 Years!” DeafNation, 2008.)

Interestingly enough, not too long ago, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine about precisely this. There are few pieces that I have–purely in the De’VIA vein–and feel very reluctant about putting them up for the world to see, let alone sell them. My basis for feeling this way isn’t reliant on the factor that it may be “angry art,” but rather, they could easily be misunderstood. Take my current piece, “What?” as one example.

First of all, this piece is “pushing it,” if you may. I chose for this piece to be very culturally ambiguous to show that the Deaf experience precedes culture. Having a deaf baby is truly a Deaf experience–whether you’re a hearing parent or not or even if you’re French, American or Swedish. The title of this piece allows me to finish that train of thought with my own perspective. . .

Read more at http://www.benvess.com/?p=336