Audio Description
S. Proski, Untitled (Mississauga 12.19.24), audio description, 05:17. Courtesy of Rebecca Singh.
S. Proski, Untitled (Mississauga 12.19.24), 2024. Image courtesy the artist.
Audio Description – Transcript
This work is displayed in landscape orientation in a six foot tall by nine foot long lightbox with a black frame. The lower edge of this lightbox’s frame is at knee level.
This artwork consists of a block of text in black all caps lettering against a bright yellow background. The text block is centred and takes up about half of the available space. There is one line of text three times as large that is printed over the block of text and to the edge of the artwork. It reads "You're so blind that you can’t even see the writing on the wall”.
Behind this the text block reads: "Still life with bowl of strawberries, jar of whiskey, plum, goose, loons cooling off in the distance, buckets of maple syrup, political upheaval, spiritual decline, limbs removed, afternoon reveries, skinny puppies, holy rollers, unraveling silver ribbons, jovial quandaries, unrelenting squall, fresh wounds, recuperated losses, reconciliation, sleeping cat, a utopian world without scarcity or hunger, gouache fingerprints, rosetta stones, collection of bone, metronome, a blood red moon, copulating snakes, tightening noose, death care consultants, broken pottery, being alone with your own thoughts, live transmission, rationing supplies, falling forward, disappearing into the ether, floundering, an eye that’s always watching, the smell of the earth and putrefaction, unanswered emails color blinding fields, declensions, the ghost of marsden hartley, nature‘s revenge, posture eugenics, the tragically hip, urge surfing, puritans, perverts, complications, trolls, smoldering heaps of rubbish, songs about the end times, terrorists, expats, crystals, apple, mint, lead, spider, ammolite, waking, puppets, vortex, wiggling, emergency, and landscapes emerging."
Untitled (Mississauga 12.19.24)
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This work foregrounds language as a bridge between blind and sighted worlds, while using dialogue and description to examine intimacy, translation, and the failures inherent in accommodation. By embracing the conceptual and poetic potential of descriptive text, the artist challenges traditional accessibility norms and reimagines what an artwork can be.
Initially conceived as a critique of performative accessibility in museums and galleries, the artist reframes didactic texts–often treated as supplementary–as the primary artistic medium. Here description functions as both still life painting and captions. The work intentionally unravels into linguistic collapse, where meaning distorts and transforms into sound. This breakdown highlights the failures of translation not as deficiencies but as productive spaces for new forms of communication.
For blind audiences, these texts are not substitutions but complete artworks–paintings constructed through language. A vibrantly coloured background and overlapping text create a deliberately disorienting and uncomfortable visual experience, shifting the focus from sight to sound. Through this approach, Proski redefines how art communicates, advocating for new forms of intimacy and connection between artist, audience, and artwork.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
The galleries are currently closed.
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.