Blind Vision

Istituto Paolo Colosimo - Naples, Italy

Curated by Raisa Clavijo

By Paul Laster

Presenting a visual display in an educational center for the blind and visually impaired seems like a bit of a paradox, but that’s exactly what Annalaura di Luggo chose to do when she staged her exhibition “Blind Vision” at the Instituto Statale D’Istruzione Superiore Paolo Colosimo in Naples, Italy.

Curated by Raisa Clavijo as part of the Maggio dei Monumenti di Napoli 2017, “Blind Vision” offered the creative output of months of photographic and social research made by the Naples-based di Luggo, in collaboration with 20 local citizens from the Istituto Paolo Colosimo and the Italian Union of Blind and Partially Sighted People in Naples.

The highly engaging project consisted of di Luggo’s photographs of the eyes of the visually disabled presented as circular light-box images in the multimedia Blind Vision installation; a photography exhibition, entitled “A Journey of Light,” which captured di Luggo’s creative process through the color documentary photographs of Sergio Siano; a giant sculpture of the iris of an eye for the blind and visually impaired visitors to touch, feel and understand; the documentary film Blind Vision, directed by Nanni Zedda, which detailed the interaction between the artist and her subjects; and a book that describes the artist’s journey and the personal stories of the participants, along with the history of the Instituto Colosimo.

Annalaura di Luggo, Blind Vision, 2017, multimedia installation, photographs, 20 light boxes, sound, variable dimensions. Sound Designer: Paky Di Maio. Light Designer: Luca Pasquarella. Installation at Istituto Paolo Colosimo, Naples, May 1 – 31, 2017.

Employing macrophotography to make a portrait of a person’s eye, di Luggo captured what appears to be the whole universe in a circular realm. The iris takes on a multitude of atmospheric colors, with the pupil becoming a metaphoric black hole. Presented in a larger-than-life format, her pictures lay bare the distinctiveness of each of her subjects-with the veracity of a fingerprint-while revealing an essence of their inner selves. Seeing the evident damage to some of the irises and pupils and sensing a strangeness in others, the viewers of the exhibition were exposed to the possible reasons why the subjects are visually disabled, as well as the beauty that exists in this part of the body that’s always in plain sight but not always compassionately perceived.

The most compelling and inventive segment of the exhibition was the Blind Vision multimedia installation, which also had a performative element to it. Presented in a barrel-ceilinged gallery that was below ground level, the exhibition featured an assortment of circular light boxes displaying precise images of one of each participant’s inner eyes and scattered about the walls of the ceiling of the space. After the audience entered the room, the lights were darkened, and one by one the eyes programmatically lit up to the accompaniment of each eye-owner’s voice telling viewers their personal thoughts about blindness, what other people say about them, and how their condition is misconceived by those who can see but who are not always sensitive.

Conceived as a kind of opera, the voices proclaim: “I can’t see, but I don’t deserve to be mocked”; “When I lost my sight, my mother was devastated”; “As a child my friends avoided me because I couldn’t see”; “A blind person is not stupid and understands everything”; “Darkness is where others get lost; there you will find me”; as well as other moving murmurs in the dark.

Siano’s still photographs of di Luggo interviewing and working with the subjects convey her empathy with their plight, but Zedda’s documentary film, which was screened in the baroque theatre of the Instituto Colosimo, brings the making of the project to life. In the film, di Luggo talks about discovering a world that was completely unknown to her, while several of the subjects share their life stories, complete with desires and frustrations.

Annalaura di Luggo interacts with student Giuseppe Carozza during the Blind Vision project. Photo: Sergio Siano.

Twenty-one-year-old student Giuseppe Carozza expresses his longing to drive but finds fulfillment in dancing, because he can lead, as he does when turning di Luggo around the stage. Musician and composer Ivan Dalia, who is 31, plays the piano and discusses the joy of making music and his desire to look into people’s eyes, even if for only a moment. Italian judo champion Matilde Lauria, who lost her sight at age 39, explains that she wants people to understand her little weaknesses, but not to pity her.

Roberta Cotronei, the 54-year-old local coordinator of the Commission for Equal Opportunity of the Italian Union of the Blind and Partially Sighted, who became gradually blind, best sums up the spirit of di Luggo’s project and the empathy it stirs in the viewer when she states in the book: “Quite often, the rest of you don’t see because images crowd your mind, and there are so many that you end up losing track of something much more important. Sometimes I’ve spent time with friends, and when the day is over, when the evening is over, I say, ‘I perceived this and that.’ And the others say, ‘But how did you manage to notice all of those things? We didn’t see them at all.’ Perhaps because we grasp something that you don’t because you’re too distracted by this multitude of elements, so it’s harder to notice the detail, the little thing. Yet it’s that detail that reveals a world to you.”

Annalaura di Luggo’s project delivers the details, and in the process, “Blind Vision” opens up a whole new world to those who look carefully and take the time to see.

(May 1 - 31, 2017)

Paul Laster is a writer, editor, independent curator, artist and lecturer. He is a New York desk editor at ArtAsiaPacific and a contributing editor at Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art and artBahrain. He is a contributing writer to ARTPULSE, Time Out New York, The New York Observer, Modern Painters, Cultured Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Galerie Magazine and Conceptual Fine Arts.