“I see when I touch”

The exhibit presents 12 sculptures, which are molded “copies” of the portraits, were created by students of the Lviv Academy of Arts to enable the visually impaired     people to perceive what is depicted in the picture by touching it. Near every sculpture there is a text written with Braille letters which tells about the artist.

The project is a brainchild of art critic Anastasia Simferovska and was realized by the teacher at the Academy of Arts Vasyl Odrekhivsky. They noted at the launch of the exposition that for the first time in Ukraine “they reveal for people with special needs a new, three-dimensional space.” They say the task wasn’t simple, because not only had the students to recreate the photographic similarity of the face features in the portrait, but also convey the style of the picture as a piece of art.

To make the exhibit interesting, canvases varying in terms of style and execution, from academic to modern, were chosen to be touched.

A lot of visitors came to the presentation, mostly visually impaired people for whom the exhibit was prepared. “We have good impressions from the exhibit, because they were trying hard for us,” says the student of Lviv Medical College Tetiana, “It is a pity that the Ukrainian artists are scarcely presented, there are mostly Polish artists. But we live in Ukraine, not in Poland.” Solomia supports her course mate, “There are many famous people among Ukrainians, and I would like to see their works.” The girls’ curator Lesia explains, “It is the first time we come to such an exhibit. However… Maybe the sculptors who created the three-dimensional copies will pay attention to this. But on the whole this is a good project.”

“This socialized branch of art is wide-spread all over the world,” says art historian Roman Yatsiv, “Unfortunately, because of various circumstances the approach to this is very sporadic, therefore I approve this attempt of young Lviv art historians and wish the success in this really important cause. In my opinion, such projects should be more frequent, because art cannot live in a frozen state: it should offer/provoke new forms of interest, and I think this exhibit will be interesting not only to visitors, but also for the power which should take care of the development of social programs.”

The exhibit “I see when I touch” will be underway at the Academic Borys Voznytsky National Gallery in Lviv till the New Year. After that the project will be shown in other cities of Ukraine and abroad.