“Deaf Power to All of Us?”

This painting is based on my experience journey in deaf culture. I wanted to express as what I’ve seen in my whole life in deaf environment experience. “Deaf Power to All of Us?” I chose this title because this is the moment of struggle with my own intersectionality identities trying to understand if I appreciate deaf identity. Being a black deaf man going through deaf culture people will uses deaf identity to overlap black identity importance based on discrimination but how I really felt is I felt discriminated as black person. I’ve seen white community abused using deaf power by stealing black power with similar posture. While black deaf community are “required” to try their best to match white deaf community’s expectation of deaf power. You may have noticed how I painted a black man’s eyes are negative symbol while white man’s eyes are positive symbol. Reason why I putted in their eyes is because it’s how we view in deaf power because we do not receive same outcome or result but in a same actions, ideas, or projects. Even how black person’s mouth are closed because our voice will not be heard no matter how much we tell our struggles and white person’s mouth are open because they will always overlap black people’s voices and make themselves more important to community. However, I forgot to mention that I put little hints of who is black or white behind the terms “Boo! and Woo!” which the first letter is actually black and white. I wanted to see how people view this artwork and the color metaphors behind person actually meant. However I felt that this is powerful message to deaf community/education system to recognize that I am struggling through education because it does affect black deaf community out there. I’m speaking for black deaf community.