Born in Simferopol the project “On the Spectrum of Emotions”, informing about the life and difficulties faced by people diagnosed with autism. To create it, professional artists and children living with autism spectrum disorder came together.
Thus, in the shopping and entertainment center “Tsentrum” in the art space “Gallery 10” held a personal exhibition “Parade of the Planets” 10-year-old Pasha Nikulchenko. The boy has autism. Pasha’s mom – Svetlana with happy eyes talks about her son.
– For the third year we have been drawing, and at first Pasha did not even like it. But the teachers managed to interest, and soon he realized that in this way he could talk about his other hobby – space. My son loves astronomy. We have solar systems on all chandeliers, – laughs Svetlana. – On the day when his personal exhibition opened and so many people came to see his work, to take pictures, he felt in seventh heaven with happiness.
The young mother looks at her son with love, remembering that when the doctors made a disappointing diagnosis, she fell into despair. She was worried about how Pasha would live, but quickly took everything into her own hands. As a child, he began to engage in creativity, singing, swimming, gymnastics, dancing, clay modeling. Parents try everything, and Pasha already chooses what he likes.
“The Special Art project deals with such children, helping to develop their creative abilities and adapt them to life,” said Irina Pivkina, producer of the Simf Art Fair, a contemporary art fair. – Pasha loves space very much and knows absolutely everything about it, he wakes up in the middle of the night to draw planets. This hobby became his meaning in life.
Also, the organizers prepared an audio guide, in the recording of which the employees of the SEC “Tsentrum” took part. The text for 20 minutes tells how to recognize people with autism, and special associations and instructions make it possible to understand how such people feel and how important it is to show tolerance in society.
– We are calmly in the shopping center and normally perceive extraneous conversations, noise, – says Irina Pivkina. – For autists it happens differently: any information that gets to them verbally, emotionally, goes through a difficult internal path. And to calm themselves, they can swing or stare at their hand in the sunlight, etc. Others, unknowingly, take this behavior for bad manners. We talk about this in the audio guide.
According to Margarita Ovcharova, leading marketer of the Centrum shopping and entertainment complex, they willingly supported the idea of recording an audio guide. More than 10 employees have contributed to educating the public about the problem of autism.
In addition, the exhibition presented unique illustrations of street art by the artist Viktor Nefedov: the works were written in 2008 for an American manual on autism issues and have not been exhibited anywhere before. Installation “Safe place” by Polina Rodriguez, in which right in the middle of a shopping and entertainment center you can hide from the views and noise for a while, and get a reboot.
The event took place within the framework of corporate volunteering, which is being developed in Crimea by the NGO “Stable Crimea”, teaching business partners with non-profit organizations.
“Irina Pivkina underwent training with us, after which she invited various business partners to jointly make such a good event,” said Anna Tsepa, head of Stable Crimea.
The art project “On the Spectrum of Emotions” was organized by “Gallery 10” in cooperation with the TEC “Tsentrum” and public organizations Charitable Foundation “Children of Crimea”, the program of the CF “Children of Crimea” – “Special Art”, the center of strategic development and project activities “Sustainable Crimea “, With the participation of the Association” Chambers of Folk Arts and Crafts of Crimea “and the support of the Presidential Grants Fund.