Artist Omar Rashan is blending neuroscience and visual art for an upcoming experimental art showcase.
“Braille + AR: A New Language of Art” focuses on making art accessible to the blind and visually impaired community.
He’s using augmented reality, illustration, embossed paper, braille, QR codes, sound and 3D printing.
“They often don’t get to experience art the way we do,” he said. As a curator, he wants to understand “what we’re really lacking and what I can bring to the community in this way.”
And he plans to change that. The artwork, he said, is designed to “make you feel like you’re right there in the moment.”
If you go
Risky Business showcase
🗓️ 5-8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10
📍 Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, 1125 Cruft St.
🎟️ Free, but must register
Rashan is one of nine artists displaying artwork at the new Risky Business exhibit showcase 5-8 p.m. Oct. 10, at the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, or CAMi. It’s free to attend, but you must register. The exhibition runs through Dec. 20.
Each artist received $20,000 from the Herbert Simon Family Foundation’s Indianapolis Creative Risk Fund to build their careers and allow them to experiment more.
Rashan and others have created projects around music, dance, literary and visual arts. The artwork takes on topics of environmental sustainability, displacement, systemic racism, substance use disorder, disability and anti-violence.
For example, Landon Caldwell, a sound designer, created his first opera with help from Rob Funkhouser, a musician and composer. Zola Lamothe took photographs that draw connections between current institutions and the Ku Klux Klan.
Rashan, 46, started this quest with research. He said he interviewed five low vision and blind people and visited the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
He received a grant from ArtMix to attend the Leadership Exchange in Arts & Disability Conference in Philadelphia in August.
Rashan also talked with local artist and designer Pete Brown, someone who has inspired his project. Brown is known for his 2012 traveling art exhibit, “BLIND. VisualEYES Without Your Eyes.”
Rashan plans to write a book about neuroscience and visual art.
In the span of one year, Rashan created 11 pieces, including a 3D heart and moon, a digital portrait of women sitting and surrounded by three hands, and an augmented reality illustration of toucans.
He’s also breaking the No. 1 cardinal rule for visiting an art exhibit. You will be able to touch almost all of his artwork.
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Mirror Indy reporter Mesgana Waiss covers arts and culture. Contact her at 317-667-2643 or mesgana.waiss@mirrorindy.org.
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