Sharing autistic women’s experiences through art

FEDERATION University Master of Visual Arts candidate, Vienna Drysdale Bischard, is celebrating her disability in her exhibition Autistic Artistic at the Post Office Gallery.

On until Saturday 26 October, the exhibition explores local female autistic creatives and Drysdale Bischard’s experience growing up with autism.

Drysdale Bischard was diagnosed just before her 18th birthday, and she said there is little research around women and autism.

“I got diagnosed with autism quite late in life, there was a rush to diagnose me before I turned 18 because it is easier to diagnose a child than it is an adult,” she said.

“That sort of started me on this journey… why did that happen?

“The research within female autism is very scant… They didn’t know that women could have autism until much later on.”

The exhibition forms part of Drysdale Bischard’s masters alongside a thesis, and she is supported by a Federal Government research training program fee-offset scholarship.

A range of mediums and present throughout the exhibition including acrylic and gouache on board and digitally created works.

Augmented reality is incorporated to symbolise the metaphorical mask someone with autism might wear to fit in.

Images of nostalgic childhood toys explore Drysdale Bischard’s experiences with autism as a child.

“I started looking at my early childhood and the fact that there was a lot of key moments within that that pointed to my autism,” she said.

“I had this obsession with fitting in and to me fitting in was having all the toys that the other kids had.”

Drysdale Bischard said it is important to celebrate female, autistic artists, and not to compare them to their male counterparts.

“We are just as intelligent and as creative as the male autistic artists and we also deserve our time to shine,” she said.

“I’m hoping that people give us a second thought, rather than just brushing us aside.

“We should be artists first, we create art not because of the disability but regardless of it, and it gives us a different perspective on the world which is just as important.”