Thanatira Sabmeethavorn

My Master's project focused on ceramics exploration, where the gaps experienced in verbal communication are explored through an interactive installation, The Gap Between Worlds (2022), that reflected my personal experience as a deaf person.

I perceive the worlds of the hearing and d/Deaf as fragmented spaces due to a cochlear implant which acts as a threshold, allowing me to cross between worlds without a second thought. I identify as both a deaf and hard-of-hearing person; yet I am neither because I occupy a space in-between. Most deaf people have some sensation of sound, but just not enough to make sense of it. A sensory dimension that I engage with, is one I can feel, such as the rhythms and vibrations of the world around me. My fingers learned to recognise the different pulsations of the key pitch when playing the piano. Others hear sound; I feel it.

The gaps, while they do not speak for themselves, serve as visual expressions that convey my situation between two worlds. Four thousand handmade and glazed ceramic pieces have replicated the shape of soundwaves, all coming together into an interactive installation to show the gaps that are felt when lipreading as my day-to-day experience.