Highlights, an exhibition designed for the blind

Art and Photography Highlights is an art exhibition designed to stimulate the artistic spirit of people, including disabled people and specifically the blind. Included in the events schedule of the Milan Off Fringe Festivalthe special exhibition of images that have marked us from the 1900s to today will remain open until October 23rd at the Best Western Hotel Madison of Milan. Curated by Dario D’Auriathe exhibition was born with the aim of making the beauty of art inclusive.

«The important aspect of differentiation compared to other experiments of this kind is the possibility for blind people to enjoy the work independently because it is usually the companion who explains the meaning”, explains Dario D’Auria. This is possible thanks to the particular layout of the exhibition. Each photographic image exhibited also has a clone in relief exposed to the wall. A process that takes into account the meaning of the image. Each image is translated through a card in braille and enriched with 3D textures to allow the work to be analysed through touch.

And this is perhaps the most interesting aspect even for those who have sight as their first sense: the possibility of highlighting and therefore highlight for touch elements that potentially pass into the background in the image or are not perceptible to the eye at all. A process that takes into account the problems of the blind, through a tactile silicone paste It synthesizes the aesthetic references of the image, making the vision of the work univocal.

Among the most emblematic images of the exhibition there is The Falling Man taken by Richard Drew for the Associated Press during the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. The 3D work highlights the personal computer and the jacket of the man who jumps from the skyscraper in a desperate gesture. And then The Kiss of Doisneauthe astronaut First on the Moon or The thinker by Rodin. Images that the blind have often never been able to touch.

On the left the image of the Thinker by Rodin, the relief version on the right.

And this is exactly the reason to visit Highlights, an exhibition that makes thetactile experience an important integration for the full understanding of the work by those who until that moment had used sight as the only element of analysis. An aspect that I understood only after having met the sculptor artist Andrea White. As a blind person, Andrea tries to make institutions and artistic bodies understand that one should not have the pedigree in order to be able to make or enjoy art.

In this regard, the doctor and artist was invited to the exhibition Juvenal Tresca with his two mixed media canvases from 1984: Rest of the soul And Peasant reality. Giovenale was among the first to exhibit not in galleries or museums, but inside hospitals to make the corridors like exhibition halls. During the exhibition born from theBenevento Inside Cultural Associationthe blind – and only them – will have the opportunity to touch the two works. For the artist, touch as manipulation becomes an enrichment of the work. Good touch to all.