Adam Wolfond is a Toronto-based autistic and non-speaking visual artist and poet whose current installation at Koffler Arts employs alternative methods to articulate how he sees and experiences the world.
Wolfond, and others like him, feel their way through life in a manner scarcely depicted for public consumption, and often encounter art created for neurotypical discernment; but he intends to turn this on its head by inviting people into a space that foregrounds his reality.
What if My Body is a Beacon for the World? uses accessible devices like endoscopic cameras and hydrophones to capture autistic experiences, focusing on movement, pace, and patterns rather than traditional narrative language and imagery.
In an interview with Now Toronto, Wolfond, who uses an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device to speak, alongside his mother, Dr. Estee Klar, explained in more detail what the exhibit seeks to achieve.
Wolfond is also a writer whose poem, I Am the Pace of My Body and Not Language, was published in the New York Times in 2023. In addition, his book of poetry, The Wanting Way, the second in a literary series, was released in 2022.
“I want to say that my work is about languaging with the atmospheres that actual autistic people think with, and a reality that is different when the paces and perceptions of the body are landing differently,” he said, his mother adding that Wolfond uses words like “languaging” and “landing” to describe the ineffable things that autistic people feel.
Wolfond’s latest work at Koffler Arts offers a multi-dimensional sensory experience that paints a picture in infinite motion and pushes the boundaries of perception by inviting people into an alternative audiovisual paradigm.
“Adam wanted to capture the movement through the city and the propensity to see pace and pattern above actual, noun, verb, object kind of language,” Klar said, adding that in dominant perception, people can subtract the welter of the world, but that autistic people are constantly wading through a jumbled ‘ceaselessness,’” as Wolfond puts it.
“…Autistics, you speak about this a lot,” Klar said, gesturing to Wolfond, “use the word foregrounding,” to describe this feeling and delineate the rush of their all encompassing truth, she explained.
The footage used for the exhibit was shot throughout Toronto, including Trinity Bellwoods Park, The Lakeshore, and Humber River.
What if My Body is a Beacon for the World? runs from Jan. 9 – 26, at Koffler Arts.
