Lena Ling

Through my artwork, I invite the public to experience and engage in the daily emotional struggles and frustration that I experience as a Deaf person and artist. This emotional state is generated by the friction of living between two language worlds: one sign and the other spoken. The act of living between these two cultures of language exposes me to the ignorance and oppression of others who do not know or understand me.

When I am in the studio, I think deeply about these frustrations that I face, and I paint my response to them on canvas. I speak therefore, with my hands. My work is created with the emotion required to connect my voice to these two worlds. My work is a portrait of my struggles, and the emotional price that comes with them.

I remember having to wear hearing aids as a child and the feeling of annoyance of with putting them on, taking them off, and maintaining them. Perhaps then it was a large part of why I was compelled to learn sign language. I challenged myself to communicate more with my hands. I eventually stopped wearing hearing aids because they made me feel unequal; yet, I know that I am not. Nor am I disabled. Simply put: I communicate differently. I sign and use gestures to interact with the hearing world that I cannot hear.

To be Deaf in a hearing world means having to choose between written text and speech in order to communicate with those who aren’t Deaf. Conversely, hearing people assume they can just speak to me, in order to be understood. Often I want to tell them, “No, I do not need you to talk louder and slower; I am suffering, trying to figure out what you just spoke. What I see is your mouth moving, but you are not communicating to me! Do not ignore my way of communicating.”

Through my paintings and sculptures, I express the confusion and frustrations of my lived experience. I make visible, what a communication barrier feels and sounds like, and the inevitable exhaustion that is its companion.