Sonia Boué www.soniaboue.co.uk twitter.com/soniaboue ‘Mainstream’ media has not yet clocked the seismic cultural significance, for autistic audiences, of Hannah Gadsby’s newest show, Douglas. A lofty but quite oblivious New York Times review by Jason Zinoman misses the mark, because the reviewer seems to have no knowledge of autistic culture. Inkoo Kang of The Hollywood Reporter does better. Kang has been watching the conversation about neurodiversity online, and notes Douglas is a novelty for pop culture. Yes. It is novel, but it’s vital that we take this observation one step further: We need to consider the import of Douglas for autistic people, and what impact it might have towards much needed societal change and improving their lives. For this we need a more sophisticated analysis of Douglas as a cultural artefact, and a dissection of the failings of ‘mainstream’ critical reviews. The Guardian’s Brian Douglas gives the film a worthy four stars, but fails to…
Tag: Sonia Boue
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.…