JWA chats with Dr. Estée Klar about collaborating with her son Adam Wolfond, a non-speaking autistic poet and artist, on a new video installation exhibit.

JWA: Tell us about the exhibit at Koffler Arts you have created alongside your son, Adam Wolfond, and the organization you co-founded together, dis assembly. 

Estee Klar: The show, What if My Body is a Beacon for the World? has grown over the course of years. We had been experimenting with video film and walks/autistic movement, as Adam says: a pacing which is akin to what he calls “languaging” or the way his autistic body expresses itself. Video is a way of sculpting time and capturing movement and pattern to which autistic perception attends, so we kept experimenting over the past two years. Even in his writing, which others call “poetic,” Adam’s innate grammar undulates like water. 

For the past two years at dis assembly, which is a neurodiverse artistic collaborative, we have been thinking alongside non-speaking autistic people with motor/movement differences. Over the past two years, we’ve worked together to find accessible ways of filming - with endoscopic, body cameras and zoom recorders and a hydrophone - to capture the sounds and details that are a part of autistic perception. Adam wanted to capture the water patterns that calm [his] body. Sticks are also a part of this installation. Sticks are used to calm [his] body, and Adam calls this movement a “twallowing”—which is a waving a stick in front of his eyes. Over time, we learned that this movement helped control the welter of the visual field that comes in all at once for many autistic people, especially the non-speaking. So this stick, we like to think, becomes a navigational tool to blur the visual field - once it is blurred, it becomes whole again. Whereas neurotypical perception can subtract details of visual and other sensory stimuli, neurodiverse perception cannot. 

JWA: Do you have a favorite piece in this collection, or one that is particularly meaningful to you?

EK: Since the piece is an entire installation, it’s difficult to say that there is one we would focus on. The installation is immersive, participatory, and experimental.

JWA: What do you you hope viewers will take away from experiencing the installation?

EK: We hope that people will come away with a different sense about neurodiversity and human diversity overall. It is assumed that we all perceive in the same way. Autistic people have suffered mostly because they are constantly subjected to the deficit model or what we call the pathology paradigm. When entrenched in this model, the goal always becomes normalization - which is impossible for many autistic people. And autistic people who have been able to recount the endless therapy days aimed at “curing” them have reported the pain and anguish this has caused. 

At our studio, dis assembly, we work outside that framework, with an understanding that human diversity is needed to understand different orientations to the world we all live in. It’s exciting to do this work together.As a parent and collaborator with many non-speaking autistic people over the years, it’s much more interesting and fulfilling to work creatively with people who have been so excluded from access to education, study, participation, and contribution.

JWA: Before you became a mother, what was your relationship to expressing yourself through art? How did Adam and his artistic practices change that relationship?

EK: My background was art studio and art history. I thought I was actually going to go to university to study music, but I ended up taking art history and studio at the University of Toronto instead. Later on I became a curator of art, which took me away for a while from my own artistic practices. Then I had Adam and went back for an master's and PhD in Critical Disability studies and I engaged in a study merging philosophy, art and neurodiversity. This revived my artistic practice alongside Adam who was writing poetry. So I began materializing what I felt in Adam’s writing in artistic ways and then this became a collaborative practice and now Adam’s interest is in film and sound making.

JWA: What is a misconception that you had about autism and neurodivergence that was challenged over the course of your research?

EK: As I said above, we reject the deficit model [of autism]. We are not naive about it— of course everyone needs better research and care. But the presupposition that has lingered that autism is undesired. We can move beyond this characterization. The autistic person has much to contribute to our understanding of the world we all share. Disability also reminds us about the importance of relation, of how we need each other, and we must change how we care for people.

JWA: Are there any Jewish values that come to mind when you think about your parenting and your collaboration with Adam? 

EK: While we shy away from charity models that have come to rely on cause-effect reasoning that produces an autism which “must be cured,” we do believe in [the Jewish value of] work as a way to change the world. I have been involved in the neurodiversity movement for 22 years now, and I see many changes, but  change never happens quickly enough. We hope this work will contribute to better access and understanding of autistic people.

JWA: What are the moments in the artistic process where you find the most joy?

EK: To be honest, every day is a joy. Sure, as a parent I’ve been alongside him during challenging times. But when Adam learned to type to communicate, and we began discussing all these issues together, I think we both felt more fulfilled. 

What if my Body is a Beacon for the World? is at Koffler Arts in Toronto through January 26, 2025.