NYAC Neurodivergent Experience Project

NYAC (Neurodivergent Youth Artists Collective) Neurodivergent Experience Project is a project that aims explore and express the neurodivergent community in a way that does not rely on clinical definitions and cultural stereotypes. This means creating a corpus of art in the most abstract sense of the word made by young neurodivergent people or people who are questioning whether they are neurodivergent to represent the community in a way that relies on sensory information and not verbal communication.

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This means no more "3 levels of autism." No more "autism is a linear spectrum" and not even "autism can be described with a radial diagram." I'm talking about synaesthetic expressions of neurodivergence, three-dimensional models of interwoven traits, abstract representations of the neurodivergent experience, and anything that conveys who and what we are through our existence and isn't bound by arbitrary discrete labels.

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This is a quest to describe neurodivergence as completely self-defined. Not through deficits and strengths relative to neurotypical people, but through our pure unfiltered experience of the world.

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Our aim is an abounding compilation of the joys of the autistic experience (fireworks going off in my head) and the depths that we can sink to (the dingy rowboat in a withered greyscale photograph) when not allowed to exist as our undiluted selves.

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This means intersectionality, melting the borders between a single neurotype and all the other discrete categories of neurotype, and weaving together a story of authenticity informed by the struggles of other minorities.