Artistic Collaboration Across Neurotypes: Autistic Artist Sonia Boué on the NUNO Project

M. Kelter theinvisiblestrings.com Earlier this year, fourteen artists (with funding from Arts Council England) presented a unique exhibition called Neither Use Nor Ornament (NUNO). “Unique” in that the event featured an intricately-designed collaboration between autistic and non-autistic creatives. The project recently released a short film providing an overview of both the exhibition and the artists involved. To learn more, I recently communicated with friend and project organiser Sonia Boue about autism, creative access needs, and the relationship between objects and autistic art. M: What was the guiding idea involved with the creation of NUNO? Sonia: The project is really essentially about me finding professional and personal congruence by bringing together two groups of people. The autistics were my post-diagnosis contacts and the non-autistics were the artists I met online before my diagnosis. I had no idea how to bring them together but I knew I had to try it out.…