Ghanaian Born (1979) Peter Owusu-Ansah is a Deaf visual artist. Being Deaf means seeing is how he understands life. Seeing produces reactions on its own. He believes he can communicate through our eyesight without words. He had explored the curiosity of seeing life through paintings, photographing and manipulating photographs into pop art. He just finds out what it looks like if he does it. In 2009 when he zoomed in one of his pop art works, he was wowed by some colourful pixels. He became deeply curious about the greatest colours imaginable in the universe. He had worked toward experiencing the sight of many great colours using Photoshop. He emerged on the art scene in 2018. His works have been shown around Canada and mostly on Instagram. He lives and works in Toronto.
I came across Peter’s work last year during the online edition of the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair and have been following him since then. It’s always a pleasure when his work pops up in my feed. I wanted to find out more about his art, and his advocacy for Deaf and Disabled communities.
Did you always want to be an artist?
Creativity has always been a big part of who I am since I was a little boy. When I moved to Canada in 1994 at the age of 15, I wasn’t registered to what art is until 2005 when I visited the AGO at the age of 25. My imagination started moving backwards to my childhood memories of being creative. From there I wanted to be artist. Before that I was thinking of becoming a gym teacher, but I couldn’t see a clear path.
Who or what inspires you?
Being Deaf means I am using my eyes as the primary way to receive information of life. The world is designed for hearing mostly and most people find joy hearing. I am not really included in that. I find my joy in seeing and the art world is one of the places I love to look. Not seeing Deaf and Disabled people being included in the art world inspires me to do something about it.
How do you think Canadian arts organizations and the Canadian arts scene can better support Deaf and Disabled artists?
The simple question is how many hearing people with abled bodies have they shown before they show work by Deaf and Disabled people? Work by Deaf and Disabled people is almost never shown. This means they don’t think we can make great works like they do, or they don’t think we exist, or we are just not worth it to them. I make my work to prove that we can be as capable as them. However, it doesn’t have to be like what I am doing, they need to learn about who we actually are and what our abilities look like and why our abilities are this way. They need to open the doors and put some of us on their exhibition list each year.
How has the pandemic affected your art practice?
I have been working for so many years getting to where I am now and where I feel very confident that my works deserve to be seen just like any great artist. I have been struggling to get my works into galleries and museums. So, I planned to print some of my works on a large, light material and walk around downtown to create interaction with people. The pandemic screwed that up.
When you are creating a piece, do you plan it ahead of time or do you create without a plan?
I ask a question. I process finding the answer. For example, what are the greatest colours I can take from life? Then I look at the art world by going to galleries and museums, and looking through the art world the on internet, words are said, but I don’t always feel it when I see. So, I go through my own to see. It starts with just doing it, then ideas show up. Processing the ideas, then more ideas keep coming. Each work I create, I study and learn about my honest feelings. To learn about my honest feelings, for instance, when observing what I have created, I ask myself if that is the best I have witnessed in the world? I want the greatest I can experience. I am always attempting to create better than best works. Doing what I do is like travelling through the universe of colours. Mixing colours in many ways and getting different results, gives me experience about my best connections with them.
Pink Paradise
What is your favourite colour combination?
I can’t share that right now. I would love a big platform and an opportunity to show that. That is my goal.
What have been some challenges in your artistic career?
I am trying to tell the art world that my colours aren’t less than all the famous artists in the world. A few people are starting to get me, but many of them are still sleeping on me. Once I get a big platform I’ll be lethal because I have so much work that hasn’t been shown yet. I have been challenging someone with a platform to sit down with me and plan a great show.
What have been some highlights of your artistic career?
Showing at Tangled Art+Disability Gallery, Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, and Black Future exhibition in 2019 by members of BLMTO organization, Mural installation by InTransit BC and now my works are showing in Ottawa gallery. This is all good stuff.
What is your dream art project?
My dream project would be to take over a major gallery or museum with work that I have not revealed yet. I want it to be large works and I want there to be a stool where people can sit, stare, and connect with themselves. I want something close to a retrospective. I will strike the space with the colours. I know for sure.
What do you want people to feel when they view your work?
I want them to be themselves. Life is about experiencing it. Whether it is to see it with your eyes, to hear it with your ears, to taste it with your mouth, to touch it with your hand, and to smell it with your nose, what I put here is the greatest of my experience. I want them to witness it firsthand from me, a person who is deaf, and who is excluded in the world controlled by hearing people with abled bodies. They don’t recognize damage they have done to the Deaf and Disability community by making decisions on our behalf and isolating our voices. That hurts a lot, living like we are nothing. I am simply doing something an attempt to be included in something the world creates. I believe the way I see and the joy I feel is the same as anyone else when they see. That is one way we can connect. I want to say because I am Deaf people feel that I can’t communicate. I feel that talking to you can be saying nothing but showing you.
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Follow Peter on Instagram
Interview by Glodeane Brown
All photos and video provided by Peter Owusu-Ansah
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