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| How Should I Know? |
During my last few weeks in my introductory drawing class at Quinsigamond Community College, we were required to make, among other things, a composition using whatever techniques we have been learning up to that point as part of the final exam. Even before then, I had an idea of what I wanted to make; this was an opportunity for me to create an expression of my view of autism in our current society. After much planning, I came up with the composition you see here, which I personally called How Should I Know? I dedicate this entry to discussing the details of the composition, what those details represent, what message I am attempting to convey.
The figure in the center embodies an autistic person (age, gender, race, etc. are unknown), strapped face down to a board and tortured via electrodes attached to the body. The autistic individual is being tortured and does not know why it is being inflicted as the people who are doing it cannot be seen. The dome encases the autistic person, isolated from the people that represent society. The viewer can see their heads but cannot see their bodies, as they are obscured in black. The viewer can only guess as to what they are doing. Yet the wires connecting the electrodes are clearly being seen coming from the obscured bodies. In short, society has isolated the autistic person via a dome and is punishing the him/her for reasons that are not made clear, neither to the person in the dome nor to the viewer.
I modeled the figure in the center from a YouTube video, which shows security camera footage of an autistic teenager being restrained and shocked at the Judge Rotenberg Center in 2002. As most people who read on the Internet know by now, the Judge Rotenberg Center is a special needs school that employs aversive therapy practices, mainly consisting of electric shocks and physical restraints, that are not medically valid and are tantamount to torture. The image of a helpless autistic individual, regardless of age, being restrained and shocked for a behavioral violation he or she does not know, understand, or has difficulty comprehending is an especially disturbing one for anyone to see, which is what I intended to replicate here. In order to make the electrodes, I taped four security tags designed to prevent book theft, one for each individual limb. Using a very basic half circle drawing in conjunction with the cross hatching technique, I created the dome to symbolize the separation and isolation of the autistic individual from society. To create the people outside the dome, I used a few Facebook photos as models and copied the bodies of the people in it via the gesture drawing technique. Next, I used a black conte crayon to obscure the bodies just below the heads, which are intentionally left faceless. This is intended to have the view guess what those people are doing in social and behavioral terms. For the final touch, I used a fine point pen to create the wires that connects the people outside the dome to the electrodes of the person inside the dome in order to reinforce the idea that the autistic person is being punished by society for not conforming to social and behavioral norms which the latter takes for granted but are not made clear to the former.
The message I am attempting to convey with How Should I Know? is that autistic people, myself included, are being ostracized by mainstream society for not conforming to unwritten social norms; for not talking, behaving, and socializing in a similar manner to everyone else. Consequently, this has a negative effect on the autistic person's self-esteem, which in turn affects his or her ability to function well in school, at work, and generally any place around other people. I only hope that anyone who views my composition gets and understands that message.
The figure in the center embodies an autistic person (age, gender, race, etc. are unknown), strapped face down to a board and tortured via electrodes attached to the body. The autistic individual is being tortured and does not know why it is being inflicted as the people who are doing it cannot be seen. The dome encases the autistic person, isolated from the people that represent society. The viewer can see their heads but cannot see their bodies, as they are obscured in black. The viewer can only guess as to what they are doing. Yet the wires connecting the electrodes are clearly being seen coming from the obscured bodies. In short, society has isolated the autistic person via a dome and is punishing the him/her for reasons that are not made clear, neither to the person in the dome nor to the viewer.
I modeled the figure in the center from a YouTube video, which shows security camera footage of an autistic teenager being restrained and shocked at the Judge Rotenberg Center in 2002. As most people who read on the Internet know by now, the Judge Rotenberg Center is a special needs school that employs aversive therapy practices, mainly consisting of electric shocks and physical restraints, that are not medically valid and are tantamount to torture. The image of a helpless autistic individual, regardless of age, being restrained and shocked for a behavioral violation he or she does not know, understand, or has difficulty comprehending is an especially disturbing one for anyone to see, which is what I intended to replicate here. In order to make the electrodes, I taped four security tags designed to prevent book theft, one for each individual limb. Using a very basic half circle drawing in conjunction with the cross hatching technique, I created the dome to symbolize the separation and isolation of the autistic individual from society. To create the people outside the dome, I used a few Facebook photos as models and copied the bodies of the people in it via the gesture drawing technique. Next, I used a black conte crayon to obscure the bodies just below the heads, which are intentionally left faceless. This is intended to have the view guess what those people are doing in social and behavioral terms. For the final touch, I used a fine point pen to create the wires that connects the people outside the dome to the electrodes of the person inside the dome in order to reinforce the idea that the autistic person is being punished by society for not conforming to social and behavioral norms which the latter takes for granted but are not made clear to the former.
The message I am attempting to convey with How Should I Know? is that autistic people, myself included, are being ostracized by mainstream society for not conforming to unwritten social norms; for not talking, behaving, and socializing in a similar manner to everyone else. Consequently, this has a negative effect on the autistic person's self-esteem, which in turn affects his or her ability to function well in school, at work, and generally any place around other people. I only hope that anyone who views my composition gets and understands that message.
