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VIVA DeVIA TOUR GUIDE
Patti Durr
Words: 486
[Art Review]

Happy Anniversary De'VIA!

Happy Launch Clerc Scar!

Greetings and welcome to the Viva De'VIA Tour Guide weekly column! I'm thrilled that Clerc Scar is up and running. I was a huge fan of The Tactile Mind Weekly and journals and their absence left a vacuum. Kudos to the Clark & Clark team for getting things up and running again.

The timing is PERFECT because twenty years ago today, nine Deaf artists came together right before the Deaf Way International Conference and Festival at the beginning of July in 1989 for a week-long workshop/think tank to kick around terms, ideas, concepts, and signs to identify a unique genre. After much discussion, they came up with the term Deaf View/Image Art (De'VIA). The beauty of this name is that it originated fully in ASL first with English being secondary.

Deaf: ASL index finger ear/mouth

View: ASL perspective (V handshape from eye to index finger/person)

Image: ASL classifer--5 handshape as if signifying a piece of paper to be read or a canvas to be painted on

Art: ASL "I" handshape squiggling down the closed 5 handshape classifer representing "image"

The abbreviation of the words to De'VIA gives the term a foreign feel and the indication of a unique language and people.

The De'VIA manifesto spells out the mandate that in order for a work of art to be classified as De'VIA, there must be the "intention of expressing the innate cultural or physical Deaf experience." Deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing artists may create De'VIA--the only requirement is that they intend to explore and represent the Deaf perspective within their work.

De'VIA works were created long before its naming and this momentous manifesto, but many of those works have gone missing or have been overlooked. Since its unveiling two decades ago, De'VIA has grown in leaps and bounds.

We continue to see artists explore their own personal experiences within the wider historical context of the global Deaf experience. Regardless of medium, form, age, nationality, gender, degree of being Deaf, we see common themes, symbols, and representations emerge just as is shown in Feminist, Chicano, Harlem Renaissance, Gay/Lesbian art and many other disenfranchised groups--all seeking to give pictorial representation and voice to their collective experiences. De'VIA includes affirmation art (celebrating Deaf culture, history, language, values, and traditions) and resistance art (works that show the oppression of Deaf people).

We hope you will join us for weekly tours of the many important, exciting, and precious gems of De'VIA, which have long been buried and hidden. Grab a shovel and a mining light as we dive into De'VIA.

The nine signatories of the De'VIA manifesto: Dr. Betty G. Miller, Dr. Paul Johnston, Dr. Deborah M. Sonnenstrahl, Chuck Baird, Guy Wonder, Alex Wilhite, Sandi Inches-Vasnick, Nancy Creighton, and Lai-Yok Ho.

The De'VIA manifesto can be viewed at:
http://bettigee.purple-swirl.com/DeVIA/DeVIA.html

More information on De'VIA go to:
http://www.rit.edu/deafartists and click expressions of culture

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Patti Durr teaches in the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.

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