ArtPrize Disappointment: Deaf Excluded from Grand Prize Winner

The grand prize winner at ArtPrize was announced last week, and it was a little bit of a disappointment to us. Why? We’ll get to that in a minute.

But first, let us just say that it can be pretty discouraging at times leading an organization that advocates for the Deaf.

As the executive director and chair of the board of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services in Grand Rapids, we run into a lot of situations where the people we serve, the Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing, are often an after-thought at best.

We have been around for 25 years now and serve 27 counties stretching north and south from Grand Rapids to the lakeshore. And we are proud to be part of this region and all of the good that happens here. West Michigan is an amazing place, and there is much to celebrate and appreciate.

But our mission as an organization is “to provide equal communication access, education, and advocacy to the Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing in pursuit of all life’s opportunities.”

This group of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing is bigger than you might think. In 2019, the state released a study that showed Michigan has some 633,000 people in those three categories. These are the people we work with every day. And so the announcement of “Before You Go” as the ArtPrize 2021 grand prize winner left us a bit discouraged.

Here’s how it’s described on the ArtPrize website:

“Before You Go is an audio-based installation that compiles a series of interviews the team conducted with members of the public from Grand Rapids and around the country. A vintage phone booth acts as the primary installation and invites spectators to come inside and hear excerpts of the interviews that have been compiled into several tracks that reflect the consistencies and similarities in respondents’ answers. The project seeks to spark thought and conversation within a diverse group of people from multiple generations while exploring topics surrounding life, death and our collective hopes, dreams and regrets within them. The interviews support the project themes of intergenerational connection, mortality, missed opportunities, isolation, and introspection. The team aims to expose the similarities amongst us and encourage conversation between generations that may otherwise be missed before it is too late.”

You could summarize the above description by saying that as an audio-based installation that invited people to hear excerpts of interviews, the 2021 grand prize winner was not available to Deaf people. The phone booth on the iconic Blue Bridge in Grand Rapids may as well have had a sign on it that said “No Deaf People.”

One could go even further and note that while the project aimed to explore a wide variety of topics with a diverse group of people from multiple generations, in neglecting to gather the voices of Deaf people it actually missed an opportunity to honor the perspective and wisdom of the Deaf and unintentionally created one more barrier between the Deaf and the hearing.

Now, is this $50,000 ArtPrize winner going to be the biggest problem most Deaf people have this week? No. The Deaf run into barriers all the time that make an inaccessible ArtPrize exhibit a pretty mild obstacle, all things considered.

But, for us, the hype and hope that “Before You Go” created in Grand Rapids during ArtPrize is just one more little reminder that our work as an organization that advocates for the Deaf continues to be important. The folks we serve are easy to marginalize, either intentionally or unintentionally, and we intend to stay in their corner and fight on their behalf.

We welcome you to join us in the work.

Deb Atwood, executive director, D&HHS
Rowan O’Dougherty, board president, D&HHS