Matchlight 2024

Matchlight: Illuminating Deaf Identity, Mental Health, and the Healing Process of Art 

 

Shining a light on neglected cultural identities.

 

Thie solo exhibition at Dyers, New York Gallery looks at the rich cultural diversity within the deaf community, which is largely unacknowledged, misunderstood and neglected by wider society. This neglect has profound implications for the mental wellbeing of the culturally diverse deaf community. Deaf people are much more likely to experience mental health difficulties throughout their lifespan than the general population and face onerous levels of discrimination in society. 

 

The culturally diverse deaf population encounter further multiple layers of discrimination and even poorer access to services which are severely lacking and, even when present, are not a match to their needs. There is a profound lack of deaf people with lived experience working in the services which aspire to meet deaf peoples' mental health needs and this is true to an even greater extent for all intersections of the deaf community. 

 

 These issues of culture and ethnicity are so far underground that we often lack the language to even begin to understand, describe and put names to the problems that are encountered. 

 

Visual art is a powerful medium that can go beyond the spoken or the signed to open a space to reflect and contemplate. I hope that this collection of works will offer food for thought. Can we begin to contemplate, can we set aside widely held tropes about 'madness', 'ethnic women', 'abnormalities' and 'disabilities'? Can we begin to see or hear 'me' or 'them'?

 

In this exhibition I strike an ephemeral match so the light can shine briefly into the darkness. Hopefully, this is just a start ..... 

 

Originating from a project facilitated by the Hospital Rooms Charity where artwork was co-created by a deaf artist (Rubbena) and deaf service users and installed in Bluebell Ward, a Deaf Specialist Mental Health Unit in Springfield Hospital, London.