Neural Connection Digital Collage Print

Description

Artist’s Statement on the artwork:

You can look at me from the outside and try to piece together your impression of what you think I might be feeling based on my movements and expressions, but it is always filtered through your idea of how the world has taught you to see me, not my actual experience. Because of this, researchers make a lot of incorrect assumptions about Disabled People’s experiences when we aren’t included in leadership in that research, and whole areas of study can be missed or come to erroneous conclusions.

As an Autistic person, researchers have often gotten it wrong, and even caused our deaths, because of the stories they have chosen to put to behaviors that are common for us. I want to live in a world where Autistic People aren’t being given electric shocks at voltages that can burn skin or make people unable to move because they are flapping their hands. They don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves, so the rest of us have to stand up for them, and try to stop it.

My nervous system rules my life. With other Autistic people, or with other people who live with fibromyalgia and constant migraines, there is a type of connection that usually contains more kindness, understanding, and accommodations than people who don’t live with these things are willing to give.

I created this artwork with that idea of neurons, mirroring, and a divide in understanding. Using my acrylic paintings and photographs I took of trees in the winter, I made a digital collage with tree branches reaching up like neurons…and a split…and others reaching down. What people see in others is often a reflection of how they view themselves, and it’s especially apparent as an Autistic Person that it plays a large role in research, premises, and in findings. If people just see in me all the things they have learned to demonize in society, they aren’t seeing me at all.

I hope to act as a bridge. Autistic and other Disabled traits should not be seen as making someone less than. I am not more human because I can make art and talk about it, or because I have a degree. I am as Autistic as they are. I have meltdowns and hit myself in the head, too. We are all different, and we have to see and accept all of that variety.

The vivid colors and patterns of my paintings that I used show how beautiful we all are. Unlike with my artwork, you can only see it if you make the effort to meaningfully include us.