As an autistic person, it’s very hard to survive and adjust myself amongst non-autistic people. One of the most problematic difficulties faced as an autistic is eye contact. Eye contact has always been forced upon me as a little girl. I have always wondered why it’s uncomfortable to look at people’s eyes. However, it was only when I was in senior high school that I knew why I have such a problem. As it turns out, every time I look into people’s eyes, I can only look at their eyes, and everything around them turn fuzzy. That means I can barely hear anything when I perform eye contact in conversations. I want to show that there are strictly only two options when I (or any autistic person with this problem) have a conversation with anyone: look into their eyes and listening to blurred words, or listening and understanding the words but avoiding eye contact all together. I want to let the audience directly feel how an autistic feels in a conversation, which is why my work is interactive.
I also want to show how prominent ableism (discrimination against disabled people) is against autistic people. The person drawn seems very angry and insisting that we should do eye contact. They are also wearing a blue shirt, a color said to be common for people supporting autism, when in fact it is a campaign by an organization that is really against autism such as viewing autistic people as living a sad life and focusing more on families of autistic people rather than the autistics themselves. The puzzle pieces featured on the bottom are common symbols used by non-autistic people, describing autistic people as childish or “missing puzzle pieces” when autistic people are just differently wired people.
Uploaded 06 February 2016