Expanding the Horizons of Touch Art
After the 6th Hong Kong Touch Art Festival, we were blessed to receive the Arts Development Fund for Persons with Disabilities from the Social Welfare Department. A series of touch art-related activities will be launched in the whole year of 2020. We are truly very happy about this. So firstly we would invite some local touch art artists, including the sighted, visually impaired and blind, to meet and discuss. We also would invite two overseas artists to share their experiences in public seminars and workshops. This is an exciting moment for developing touch art in Hong Kong. Also CCCD has specially set up The Touch Art Space at JCCAC L205 to display touch art artworks. The artworks exhibited would be changed from time to time.
Touch art is not constructed just for the needs of the visually impaired; touch art is for everyone! Touch art is not just the sensation for the hands. The sensation can come from different parts of the body with which we touch!
Unfortunately, the epidemic of COVID-19 forces everyone to follow the rules of social distancing: staying home, no more social gathering of more than 4 people, washing hands frequently, hands off your face, no more handshaking or hugging... The aforementioned touch art programmes have been postponed. Besides conducting online meetings, is it possible for us to set up the display space for touch art artworks?
Certainly we need to consider the hygiene and disinfection of the exhibition space seriously. Getting into the exhibition space: crowd control, temperature check…We don’t recommend kissing and hugging the artworks although both are means of “touching”them.
While the coronavirus is becoming a pandemic, we notice that dance and theatre companies, and even the museums try to share their artworks, past and present, online. Reflecting on how we can exhibit touch art under the situation of coronavirus: is it possible for them to be appreciated online? Maybe we can upload the artworks online with audio description (by both the artists or appreciator). We should explore the possibilities at this moment and time.
No matter how the situation is - whether you sit carefreely inside your home and in front of the screen, or come directly to this exhibition space in CCCD, you are wandering into the first Touch Art Space in Hong Kong, and you are invited to appreciate the artworks. We invite you to open your sensations to touch and to feel.