Deaf and Hard of Hearing K-12 Art Contest

Deaf and Hard of Hearing K-12 Art Contest
“The Deaf Experience”

The Maryland Governor’s Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing along with First Lady Yumi Hogan proudly announce the state’s first art competition for Deaf and hard of hearing K-12 students living in Maryland. The competition presents an opportunity for Deaf and hard of hearing students to reflect on, explore, and integrate personal experiences as Deaf individuals through artistic expression.

The art competition focuses on the use of De’VIA elements. De’VIA is an art movement that examines and expresses the Deaf experience from a cultural, linguistic, and intersectional perspective. De’VIA has specific characteristics within the art, including contrasting colors and a centralized focus on facial and/or body parts such as the eyes, ears, mouths, arms, and hands, along with motifs, metaphors and insights representative of the Deaf perspective. The movement is also the celebration of Deaf culture and sign language through artistic expression. De’VIA provides artists with the freedom and opportunity to explore dimensions of one’s hearing status and its relationship with the world.

The De’VIA Manifesto, issued in 1989 by several leading Deaf artists, emphasized the Deaf experience “by using formal art elements with the intention of expressing innate cultural and physical Deaf experience.”

This art competition seeks to integrate the development of art along with young artists’ awareness of their hearing status. The contest also hopes to bring public awareness of what it means to be Deaf while recognizing the language, communication, culture and history of Deaf people.

Vlog about the competition

Deadline: Wednesday, January 31, 2018

There will be an award ceremony in March recognizing the winners.

The competition packet including forms can be downloaded here.

A copy of the original manifesto can be found here.

A sample curriculum for educators can be found here.