Art beyond sight

As a country of extreme insensitivity towards the disabled, where incapacities often earn uncharitable nicknames that literally translate to "Blind" or "Deaf" or "Lame", I have been charmed this week watching two youngsters work on a programme that lets the sight-impaired understand, if not quite "see", art. Those of us who are blessed with sight rarely consider the world of the blind, but these youngsters are hoping to make a difference to their lives in our museums and galleries.

What they have created seems both simple and elemental, making me wonder why it took so long to replicate what seems practical. While material in open Braille has been put out, it is the tactile exercises that make the programme they have worked with heartening. In one instance, they have replicated material (wax for encaustic) and the way it is turned into artistic material by abstract painter Shanti Dave. In another, S H Raza's pattern of lines and grids has been etched in acrylic for the blind to run their hands over and experience the painting through tactile sensation. Jamini Roy and Chittaprosad's print-making has been easier to replicate with surfaces that recreate Jesus' face, or birds in a swampy marsh.

The blind already know how to use their fingers to focus their senses, so the greatest service is in providing them material on art, a mostly overlooked subject. A Braille art newsletter on artists and their practice was recently launched to coincide with the programme. As blind visitors get drawn into the nuances of colour and form - the building blocks of art - it is almost uplifting to watch them experience the cadences. But it is even more absorbing to watch the sighted wear blindfolds so they can experience the same sensations as the sight-impaired. Among the more instructive exercises is visitors being guided in understanding sculpture by first touching their own face and body followed by that of the sculpture to understand plasticity and modulation.

The point of these exercises is not instant gratification, or suggestion, but a dawning realisation about the art we take for granted. How do you explain colour to those who have never seen it? What does form mean to them? How do the deaf and dumb articulate creative ideas and processes? Why is wheelchair access denied to the disabled in so many places?

As a society, we have to become more caring, and the visual arts might seem the rightplace to start, even if it seems like an oxymoron. Not only does art sensitise us, it also highlights that the disabled have as much right to art as all of us - yet, we are callous when it comes to including them in this process. Nor is it just the handicapped who are marginalised; often the old and infirm find navigating through cultural spaces just as challenging because we appropriate cultural spaces to exploit commercially rather than creatively.

Art is a tactile experience - we refer to impasto surfaces and brushstrokes, for instance - but as art spaces get more museumised, we are ticked off for wanting to understand art through touch. Perhaps rightly, but if we are to relive the emotion an artist imbues his work with, touch is as important a criterion as sight, and the sooner we begin to experience a blind person's helplessness in appreciating art and move towards a more equitable society, the better we will be for it. And if Benode Behari Mukherjee could continue to paint and make collages despite being clinically blind, there is no reason for others like him not to be able to "see" what he created.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated