Deaf Art

Art in its broadest sense encompasses the visual arts and literature, music, dance, theater, and film. In these myriad forms, art both creates and transmits culture. As with the arts of other marginalized cultures that overlap with the dominant culture, the arts of Deaf culture have existed sometimes parallel to those of the dominant culture and sometimes integrated into the arts of the larger culture. Although Deaf artists have sometimes chosen theater and film, and more recently music and dance, as their mode of expression, the visual arts and literature are the two art forms with the longest history in the Deaf community. Visual art makes available a means of communication to those who are isolated, for many reasons, from the dominant culture. For all ...