Starting an arts career is like having a new lover – especially if you’ve hopped from one field to another, or if you’re me, from one insular community to another. And if there’s no interaction between the two worlds, the contrast becomes more marked, and thus more scary and exciting and irresistible all in one.
Last century – before textmessaging, when email was a baby – I was a fashion journalist, forever hungry to see my words in print, chasing magazine editors for my next commission (and meal). Fashion consumed me, invaded every part of my life, to the point where the only thing that mattered to me was being right there, right now, rubbing shoulders with the great and good of fashion if only to get something to write about for the papers. What did I care if I was deaf? I went to loud parties as so to lipread better; I slept right next to the fax so print-outs could tickle my cheek as they spewed out; I devoured the papers so as to be more knowledgeable than my hearing peers.
Unfortunately I also rejected my community and my identity. I had no deaf role model to look up to, ergo, I could not see how having a deaf identity could help me further my career. Think fashion is deaf-inaccessible? Imagine how worse it must have been before the DDA. It’s too fast, too furious, too preoccupied with its own urgency to care what happens to its protagonists. If you ever caught some fashion addict quip, ‘That’s so five minutes ago!’ as often as I did, you’d feel the heat too.
Not that I am advising aspiring deaf fashionistas against entering the industry – and there are several I would back willingly – but you can’t deny its brutality. This is a world where the telephone is king, and talk is more valuable than gold. Even in this post-DDA age, you still have to be prepared to sacrifice your social life – a vanguard of the Deaf Community – just so you can be (in fashion-speak) in with the in-crowd. Snobbish? Of course; that’s the point. Lacking in Deaf Awareness? At times it’s not even aware of itself!
More than two years to the day, like an ex-lover, I ditched fashion to become an artist, embracing my deaf identity through creative expression. Only then was I able to unlock aspects of myself that I’d previously suppressed during my fashion tenure and acknowledge that all that time, I’d been going through life as a pre-lingually deaf person, not a pseudo-hearing one who could ‘speak well’. Significantly, through enabling me to accept my deafness positively as an essential part of my make-up – rather than something to be ashamed of – it made me stronger and more confident.
Don’t get me wrong; I respect the choice of those who decide not to take that path. I simply speak from personal experience. En facto, I welcome cultural diversity among deaf and hard-of-hearing artists, for it is this that gives visual art its variety and gives rise to so many opportunities for thought-provoking debate. This is why I aim to support deaf and hard-of-hearing visual artists unconditionally and without political bias. My only concern is that they get the opportunity to work as equals within the mainstream regardless of language (BSL or English), utilize their creative talents to the full, and be recognised for it.
Art can be liberating. Its scope for imagination is its greatest asset, and deaf and hard-of-hearing artists should be allowed to exploit it for their own means. In its broadest context – and here I drop the capital to a small ‘d’ – deaf visual art is not necessarily political, although a few of its perpetuators may wish to make a political statement in the way that Fluxus might. The most telling quality of deaf visual art tends to lie in its perspectives rather than its subjects: art made by deaf people, informed by their own personal experiences as deaf, deafened or hard-of-hearing people. Like any art, deaf visual art is a journey, a relationship that promotes mutual learning – for artist and audience alike. It is this ability to facilitate creative and imaginative development that makes me feel complete as a person.
The other week, I visited the Brompton Road for the London Oratory, a 1880s Roman Catholic church that cascaded with visual Italianate eloquence and left me giddy with ideas. Upon emerging, as if from a bacchanalian evening, into the blinking September afternoon, I chanced upon a throng of groomed blondes in expensive black, loitering outside the Natural History Museum.
It was London Fashion Week, which in the excitement of my new relationship, I’d totally forgotten about. I took one look at my more insouciantly dressed self and realised that, instead of feeling scruffy, I felt comfortable in my own skin. Worlds may collide and we may never erase the possibility of my two lovers meeting, but at least in the meantime, I can ensure that I benefit from the journey of creative self-discovery this time.
