By Imaan Moosa
Edited by Yumna Bodiat
We spoke with visual artist Alexandra Malkhouf about the physical creation of art with a visual impairment.
A moment is equal to 90 seconds. That is easily believable when weighing the impact of the most life-altering moments. The earth tilts on its axis, the day is spun into the night and in 90 seconds the world is not what it was before.
However, there are other instances when 90 seconds feels longer than the time it takes to fill a cup of water or say hello to a familiar face. It begins like a fever; a sore throat, runny nose and then you are shivering and aching and your head is a ball of cotton.
A moment is equal to 90 seconds, but sometimes 90 seconds happens slowly and then all at once.
This is how 32-year-old Alexandra Malkhouf lost her eyesight, who has more or less 5% vision today.
Malkhouf told To EmpowHER that she has always had problems with her eyesight, but it was at the tender age of 14 when she became blind in her right eye.
When most teenagers were discovering breasts and periods or whether they like boys or girls, Malkhouf was struggling with her ability to see. Throughout high school, she had clear vision in her left eye. Unfortunately, it was when she hit her twenties that all loss of sight was a gradually facing reality.
"My left eye was more or less stable until I was 20 and from there, in a more or less circuitous fashion, it deteriorated. When I was 27 my vision was almost non-existent. Until today I have more or less 5% vision."
In spite of the disability, she created. She says she began creating art for as long as she can remember. Her family encouraged her creativity, an activity she could complete indoors.
“My eyes have always been sensitive to light so most of the activities I engaged in were indoors. My family always encouraged me to draw and paint so that’s where I focused my energy,” she says.
Malkhouf attempts to come to an understanding of herself through the hours spent on her visual art. She describes the area between visual impairment and visual art as “tension”.
As able-bodied artists can create what they have visualized, she struggles with being able to visually transfer an idea onto canvas. The natural response of a creative when noticing a mistake on paper is to correct it, but for Malkhouf her feedback system is different.
This tension between blindness, visuality and making is a very interesting and difficult space to be in. The way I frame it, the way I think about making art, hasn’t changed but I no longer have a reliable, or at least the same, feedback loop.
She expresses her inner battle and the unique perspective she has on the world through her artwork. Although she does not always convey a particular message in each work created, she says the process is selfish.
At the point of making, I am making for myself, usually to get to some type of understanding. This drive to learn and understand and eventually connect is why I make art. It is just my chosen language.
She does this by experimenting with different mediums and methods. Currently, Malkhouf is using charcoal and acrylic paint. Her chosen medium influences the way she thinks about her subject matter and the way she thinks influences her method of application.
Part of ‘Reorientating the Minds Body’ (2018), mixed media on paper by Alexandra Makhlouf.
When asked about her creative process, she takes us through the creation of a piece for her master’s exhibition.
“A charcoal drawing I made for my master’s exhibition was a place where a couple of years of thinking deeply about art-making came together. It was the first artwork I had made since becoming legally blind in 2014.
“My interaction with the artwork helped me work towards contextualizing my place in the world, in relation to space and in relation to art-making.”
She told To EmpowHER that the piece was a large piece of paper decorated with different types of pens, pencils, and charcoal marks. At certain places “the paper is torn and bent where I bumped into or tripped over it. There are a few paw prints from my guide dog too”.
Malkhoufa imagines many possible futures for herself. She maintains that a moment is just that: 90 seconds. She chooses to live in the moment, making each and every 90 seconds more meaningful and beautiful than the last.
Like many people with disabilities, I prefer to and can only really live in the present. The quality of my sight changes almost daily so this dictates what I can do and how I do it.
A note from Alexandra Malkhouf:
Always, ALWAYS keep creating. Listen to good and bad criticism but never allow that to stop you from making.
Alexandra is studying psychology part-time at the University of the Witwatersrand while she awaits the results for her Master of Fine Arts dissertation.
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