After the Deaf Dance without Music initiative in Nepal, I had to be back in Bangalore with the Indian Business Academy, the business school I am professionally affiliated to. Well, getting back to Bangalore for me was like a fish thrown back into a tank with old buddies. I settled down to the warm welcome of dear Deaf friends some of who are professional artists. What could be done at this front?
Projection of Deaf Art. No, not art produced by Deaf Artists. But art conveying a Deaf perspective, a Deaf message. The first meeting was with a small group of 6, late in the evening in my Bangalore apartment, sometime in October 2006. The concept of Deaf Art was discussed and samples of Deaf Art from Deaf Artists abroad were exhibited.
The India Deaf Expo 2007 was coming up in January 2007. Could India Deaf Art be launched at this Expo? The handful of my Deaf artist friends got to work and eventually some 32 paintings were ready. Initially, Deaf friends who contributed were Anirban Das Gupta from Kolkotta, Sripathy Konnada from Andhra Pradhesh and Tiju Isaac from Bangalore The Indian Business Academy CEO, Manish Jain volunteered to financially facilitate the cost of getting these art works framed. The artists and myself worked together on the captions explaining the Deaf message in each work of art.
In the meanwhile, something happened that made me touch a new high! I got invited by the Deaf Expo Committee to write an abstract for the Expo journal and also do a presentation on Deaf and Social Inclusion. My Deaf friends looked at me. They thought I felt intimidated by the idea of living with an exclusively Deaf crowd, several days at a stretch. Well, was I uncomfortable? Yes, just a little. As Helen Keller put it, like a breeze through the flowers.
"Deaf Art. No, not art produced by Deaf Artists. But art conveying a Deaf Perspective, a Deaf message..."
The breeze over, I was ready with the abstract for the journal, the stage presentation all in signs and slides and the flight tickets to Coimbatore and back. My first experience at an international Deaf Expo! And together, our first launch of Deaf Art. We named it IndeVIA or India Deaf View of Image and Art.
What's happened since then? We've had Nepal's first exhibition of Deaf Art 'Eyes Empowered 2010', March 10-12 at Hotel Himalaya, Kathmandu. With some 100 paintings from Deaf Artists and the presence of Deaf delegates from the UK, India and Nepal, the event was a watershed in Nepal's history of the Deaf! And the story does not end here... Deaf Art is here to stay...
