Haptic modes of engagement in Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet

Corporeality / Sensoriality / Materiality: Body-centered interpretations of South African art

Abstract

Created for people with visual limitations, Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet (1990 – ongoing) has already received extensive critical attention. Surprisingly, however, this literature has overlooked how those for whom the installation was created, experience and appreciate it. This article reports on a series of interviews with people who are blind or have vision loss, and people who are sighted and were blindfolded. The participants in the study were invited to explore and then describe their experience of selected sculptures in the letter L series, which is the latest addition to Blind Alphabet. The research demonstrated that the different sculptures solicit different tactual exploration by the participants thereby revealing insights about the sculptures that are unavailable to sight. Furthermore, Blind Alphabet solicits haptic, kinaesthetic, and proprioceptive interactivity from its blind and blindfolded audience. This whole-body, multisensorial engagement, in turn, activates memory, affect and the imagination. In this way, Blind Alphabet foregrounds the body as the locus of perception, thought and consciousness and demonstrates the role of the senses other than sight in shaping the experience, understanding, and meaning of artworks.