I have used assistive technology from younger years to embroider text onto a lace tablecloth. The contrast of lace and thick wires is two different worlds of dainty and mechanical. The text becomes harder to decipher over time which mirrors the experience of trying to hold onto conversation at the table once the easily contextualised small talk has wrapped up. I specifically chose to make some of the later parks of the text with an aura migraine that was triggered by needing to rely on lip reading and hearing aids.
I have chosen the specific text because it represents a few things for me. How we choose to politely and quietly exclude ourselves from social situations, along with how Deaf people perform manners to appease hearing people “Sorry, I am Deaf”. There is a real scrappiness to this work which represents for me, a process of using whatever is on hand to try and hold it together like my childhood hearing aids covered in layers of tape.
Photo: Ravi Vasavan