Avoy 2019 — Drawing the Invisible

"My work, a series of pastel portraits of Avoy MU Brno blind football team members and their coaches, is part of my drawing/photography project and was made within the international blind sport community over the course of 8 months. It is a return to the very roots of art-activist representation of underprivileged groups by simply putting their beauty and existence before the eyes of the audience.

I show people who are disabled, sometimes disfigured, at the same time as I deeply and personally engage with them. In today's extremely individualistic and lonely society I find this necessary creative engagement reveals something of the revolutionary potential of art. It is hard to say who benefits more from that contact, as the team members gain pride and confidence and I get truly transformative experience. To make portraits like these, the blind subjects have to trust me and my good intentions to present them well, as they cannot control the results themselves. This project wouldn't have come to fruition if I hadn’t put aside the sight-based world I knew, to become “one of them”, following the team to tournaments, matches and social meetings with my camera, paper and box of pastels, and most importantly, an open mind.

The series was my free-choice project for the drawing studio of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, Poland, during the academic year 2018/19. Although developed independently and with little help from my teacher, the project gained technical approval during the exams.  The topic, however, was labeled unclearly as 'niche', which leads me to think that activist art should rather be done outside of the classroom.

The series was presented at the international conference 'Breaking Boundaries. Academia, Activism and the Arts' at the University of Lisbon, Portugal in September 2019."