Barcelona in a Bag

Studio shot after the big tidy.

This is a short blog post to share a video link which I’m excited about. It features the new panels I’d squirrelled away for the Artist’s Eye project. I’ve also worked out how to make myself appear out of nowhere(!) My editing techniques are building through experimentation. This is how I work best.

Uncertain Weather System In Place has been wrapped and stored ready for exhibition in May, and my studio is now ready for a new cycle of paintings. The creative processes in this instance have somehow – a la Mary Poppins – magicked the studio into a neutral and roomy workspace. There’s even enough space on one wall for the six new panels I’d like to start working on. In fact they’re up and ready. I just hadn’t realised how much space my sand tray/ video set had been occupying for so long (possibly more than 12 months).

But I have to wait for the ACE decision before I can begin on the Felicia Browne work. My thoughts about this process in relation to autistic artists can be found on The Other Side.

I know that I face a high risk that ACE will say no. So I’m prepared for that and will have to take it from there. With just under two weeks to go the countdown begins.

I’ve been preparing a new piece of work for a brief group showing coming up in late May in a temporary location. Our gallery, once a car show room, is located just around the corner from my studios on a main road, which runs in and out of the city of Oxford.

I’m at a pivotal moment in my practice. I’ve spent the last three years building a body of work whose main focus has been the state of exile, and more specifically the Spanish Civil War as personal history. This exploration has been a huge catalyst in my work as an artist and immensely important in terms of my own personal narrative.

But there has been a parallel development. Alongside this investigation I have become aware – through a deep and personal interest in autism – that I am myself autistic. Equally seismic in implications to discovering my true Spanish heritage, this now dominates my emotional landscape. Spain is there but autism feels closer just now. This is to be expected only 5 weeks on from diagnosis.

So the group show has brought a particular challenge. This is a large group showing, a showcase for my beloved studios, in which the intensely personal is not a good fit. I am still emerging as my autistic self in any case, and want to take my time in how this is expressed in my professional life and through my work.

I know that these two aspects of my life – my history and my neurology are tightly bound. I feel they form a symbiotic echo chamber. Each aspect of my difference from the majority culture in which I find myself – a hispanic British and autistic woman – share in otherness. Exile as metaphor and reality serve in both. There can be a unity of expression as my dually culturally alienated selves have both masked and informed each other.

For this show I have produced a new piece of work which I feel captures this transitional moment and hints at a greater level of ambiguity in my work as a possible new direction. The accompanying text can be seen below. My sense is that this piece contains more by saying less. We’ll see.

“My practice is concerned with the state of exile.

Uncertain Weather System In Place (2016), represents a new departure whilst drawing on previous explorations.

A site specific piece, it has flowed partly from a restriction on wall space at the now empty VW garage showroom, but also from curiosity about showing my paintings as objects, sometimes propped but also on horizontal surfaces. This work, comprising of three intersecting painted panels, will occupy the floor. Walls often demand a more polished aesthetic and I wanted to create a piece which did not conform to this expectation.

The gallery space for this brief group showing under the title Dislocate, is due to be demolished. Temporal and unstable, this space seems perfect for the articulation of displacement and the haunting interplays of absence and presence.

Hovering between sculptural and painted forms, drawing on theatre and object work this piece also contains three objects from a growing repertoire of props and was made on my studio floor. The painted fields, each with a history of their own, take on the patina of flooring, and in parts appear wiped (as if by a mop) yet hold complex narratives. Serving also as landscape they reflect imaginary states of internal weather.

With the suggestion of departure and the gathering of essentials, the preparation for rupture or demarkation, this piece also hints at tribute and loss.

Uncertain Weather Systems in Place, Sonia Boué, mixed media (wax, sand, acrylic paint, framing tape, dried flowers and mirror). Three painted panels, 49.5×28 cm/ 69×29 cm/ 94×43 cm.”

I made a video about presenting myself as my authentic autistic self. This video is called Out the Shadows and marks a turning point in my video work, which explores my studio practice but also seeks to work with alternative ways of presenting the self.

My blog posts used to be about my work. I know they will be again, but right now I’m processing something major to do with identity and this takes time. You don’t just get a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome and carry on as before.

I know that my Spanish Abuela (grandmother) – original owner of the blog bag and my inspiration for all my work – would wish me to speak out.

The other day I posted a poem on my neuro-blog, The Other Side. The writing flowed from a specific experience of alienation. A minor thing – seen from a neurotypical perspective. This experience entailed a contortion on my part. I had to reign in and reshape my natural brain functions for several hours at a time. I had to work at a pace that was agonisingly slow and be “accurate” in using instruments of measurement when I can instinctively gauge accurate measurements by feel and by eye. I suppose this could be like being made to write right-handed for a left-hander? I don’t know. What I do know is that it was intensely demoralising and uncomfortable for me.

Writing is often processing – and in writing the poem I began to see how this seemingly minor event could be crushing in it’s effect. It was all my school days, my recent experiences with the ACE application through the new portal Grantium, and a lifetime of contortion weighing down on me.

I have a lot to work out I realise.

And I want to write about it because this is what neurotypical systems do to brains that are wired differently. We must contort constantly to formats that don’t fit us – we must perform neurotypicality in order to pass, qualify and gain basic rights. And this is not just to be accepted socially – it is true of task based requirements too (for many of us.)

This will be hard for me to describe other than in poetry (perhaps prose) or through visual art. Others are working on these ideas through political theory and these are without doubt rights based issues.

I have an idea to write quite extensively about my experience with Grantium and the application process as a wider issue. The portal alone is not the problem, although it is certainly an obstacle.

If neurodiverse artists must contort themselves thus to conform to basic requirements for funding applications (among the entire gamut of vital tasks for the arts professional) we face a complex set of hurdles.

In order: we must contort successfully (we must know the shape we have to fit) and we must do so consistently throughout a long a complex form. This is called passing. We must sustain such efforts over time – our processing is often affected by ND (or just different/slower because we are working against ourselves). We risk psychological pain (due to re-living trauma of past contortions). We risk physical effects of contortion (I have anecdotal evidence that ND artists can become unwell through the process of application) such is the strain on us.

Last week I received news of an unsuccessful application to ACE by an ND artist. This application was a year in preparation and was failed on public engagement. Public engagement was strong in the project but not expressed in terms that were recognised as such by the panel on the day. This is an issue of passing in more than one sense.

ND artists must contort successfully at present, but we mustn’t continue so. Not only because it is bad for us body and soul, but because we risk failing to pass through psychological pain, exhaustion or faulty translation. Many won’t even try.

I liken this process to an uncomfortable performance and not one of our choosing. We must perform neurotypicality, and this in my mind conjures a somewhat frantic performing monkey.

This is pioneering work, these systems (in fairness) have been created in ignorance of the true implications of brain diversity. Access help is available, but of limited use to artists who need to be able to show their thinking in alternative ways rather than engage in prolonged and damaging contortions. The system as it stands needs careful unpicking in order to be truly equitable for all.

In my last blog post I talked about a slight wobble. It’s been an extraordinary time in my life to discover (at this late age) that I’m autistic. Mainly it’s wonderful, and only occasionally not. Wobbles occur when I realise how many misconceptions still exist, and I worry that people might think differently about me than before. I tell myself that this will be their problem and not mine.

So I’m glad I decided to make my neurological status public knowledge. I feel this will help the cause of neurodiverse artists specifically, and have been delighted to contribute to a really great piece on this subject by Neil Ayers, featured in Creative Review.

Mostly, I feel privileged. I belong to a relatively rare group of people who process information of all kinds in a different way. The idea that what I’ve considered ordinary really isn’t is interesting to me and I want to explore that. I’m reluctant to feed into myths about autism by saying it sometimes feels like having secret powers, but actually it does. Knowing that you arrive at solutions from an entirely different angle makes your perspective valuable and can be considered one of our strengths.

Of course it’s not quite always like that and I’m aware of the downsides too.

Yet I begin to notice that my sensory life is radically different to the norm, and for my work as an artist it’s a complete boon as I’m hypersensitive, meaning I experience most sensory data acutely. Thus I’m intuitive and tactile in my artistic explorations and can make speedy connections, which contain a logic beyond thought. I know I can rely on this in my practice, along with my ability to lend intense focus to everything I put my hand to – as long as it interests me.

I’m also coming to terms with the need to process this experience fully – and how this has temporarily derailed my current projects. Autism Acceptance Month has also provided many distractions. There are just SO many wonderful articles to read and programmes to catch up with.

There are also causes for concern. Finding out about a new memoir which suggests transcranial magnetic stimulation as a potential “treatment” for autism has led to a four day diversion. Reading the book and blogging on The Other Side, ensued. I couldn’t let it pass – I had to investigate and speak out.

I am also a carer for other autistic family members and it’s been school holidays. My studio gathers dust, while I await for structure and resolve to return.

I’ve loved my neuro-holiday. I’ve needed it. I’ve needed to assimilate, regroup and am now ready to press on.

One development over the holidays has been the slow transformation of the family home into an aesthetic extension of my studio space. Suitcases pile up, dried roses gather and the paintings regroup around the walls. New paintings fresh back from the Brain Dancing exhibition join older pieces. I tell myself I have no storage space at the studio for these works (true) but also I’m enjoying looking at them in this context.

Living with works is a double edged sword. Eventually you stop seeing. But for now it’s great.