Making Art Accessible: How to Create a Tactile Abaporu Art Piece

This project was originated from an Assistive Technology session at our Makerspace. We had blind and sighted people working together to solve the following problem: how can we find ways to make culture more accessible?

Each group came up with a different answer to that same question. This instructable is the result of the work of the participants Pedro, Luiz, Heitor and Eduarda, with the help of facilitators Renato, Naya and Soraya.

The problem stated by the blind students was about visual arts: how could they experience some of the most famous pieces without sight? They decided to adapt them so that blind people could be inspired by art in their own way using textures and braille.

This project uses Abaporu, a well-known art piece created by modernist Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral in 1928. It depicts a gigantic, genderless person with a small head, representing not only the Brazilian work force at the time, mostly made up of manual workers, but also the movement in which Tarsila participated, Antropofagia (means human cannibalism), where the idea was to swallow American and European art styles and create true Brazilian art.

Abaporu was chosen not only by its importance, but also because its elements are easily distinguishable, making it easier to come up with different textures and materials for each one.

For this project you will need:

Materials:

• Towel-textured EVA
• Regular EVA
• PLA for 3D printing
• Aluminum foil
• Spray ink of different colors
• Boards of 3mm (1/8 in) MDF
• PET bottles
• Synthetic leather

Tools:

• Hot glue
• Super glue
• Laser cutter
• 3D printer

The first thing the participants needed to do was draw a vector image of Abaporu, so that each element could be cut in the laser cutter. These files are available to everyone in the attachments.

In this step, the most important thing to do is choosing which materials and textures you are going to use. Remember to use materials that can represent well each element of the art piece. For example, we chose regular EVA for the sky because it passes an idea of softness.

In order to place each piece you cut, you need to cut a MDF base to glue everything on it.

Remember to also cut a frame in MDF to enclosure your painting.

Putting everything together is like assembling a puzzle. You need to be careful with the order of layers you want to make.

In our case, the sighted students were using the glue while the blind were feeling the different textures as the piece was being constructed.