Day 11 of 28 Days

ROCK ART (A)
Topic: Celebrating the existence and survival of American Sign Language

The original canvas board had handprints done in June 2016. This time, I did the reversed art, meaning painting black background to make the images. This is inspired by 1989 De’VIA visual manifesto, with Chuck Baird’s six handshape cutouts and the three primary colour hands on top of mask. Put them into nine handshapes that are to honour the first nine signatores who signed the manifesto. Since the reserved art was first started in 2013 with the artists painting the 2nd Wave of De’VIA mural, the handprints have become a posterity of De’VIA. These motifs are important symbols for De’VIA. Hand Fish represents either affirmation or resistance, meaning fish in bowl isolated or a deaf community. Eyes are visual and often used in art as in affirmation. Elephant that I use often, in many paintings, represents the Elephant in the Deaf room, as part of resistance category. Butterfly motif is a symbol for Deafhood journey, used often for identity searching as part of affirmation category. The triangle shape is part of the original 1989 visual manifesto and it has been used often in other murals and paintings. We want to carry that tradition with us. The whole image on the painting shows ROCK ART on a cave wall.