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Disability Arts Cymru

Sara Louise Wheeler: The Sands of Hearing Time

Art

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My drawing is on A3 smooth white paper, using mostly graphite pencils in various shades of grey, but with some colouring pencils. It is a self portrait of my head and shoulders from the side, with my head tilted back and my eyes closed. I have shown my depigmented hair in very light shades of grey, silver, and ivory. My lips are pink, and my skin is the most pale shade of pink possible. I am wearing a thick dark grey, textured cardigan. Whilst everything else is realistic as it would be in a portrait, you can see through the side of my head above my ear. I have replaced my cochlear with an hourglass, or egg-timer. This is shaded brown and you can see the sands of time as they flow from the top of the hourglass, through the narrow funnel, and into the bottom section of the hourglass.

‘The Sands of hearing time’ – This is a self-portrait, showing me looking upwards with my eyes closed, with a contemplative expression. It depicts my depigmented hair and skin, and also the cochlear, which is symbolized by the replacement of the cochlear with an hourglass in which the sands of time are flowing from the top to the bottom. As the pigment in my cochlear is lost, so too is my hearing. This drawing is part of a series of self-psychoanalysis artworks and poems, in which I am learning to accept the reality of my condition, Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1. I am accepting that I am losing my hearing as a natural process, whilst seeing it as a reboot, reigniting and thus ‘aildanio’ and adaptatation of my sense of identity, by learning to adapt to my new embodied sense of self. I created this image to accompany my poem ‘Y ras I cynganeddu/ the race to cynganeddu’. I am in a race against time to learn cynghanedd poetry, developing the necessary skills, before the sands of hearing time run out.

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