Eşref Armağan

• Name — Eşref Armağan • Born — 1953 • Birthplace — Istanbul, Turkey • Field — Painting

Armağan grew up legally blind in a less than fortunate household and with no formal education. One of his eyes failed to develop beyond a "rudimentary bud", meanwhile the other was "stunted and scarred". Having no visual perspective of the outside world, he resorted to experiencing the world through heightening his other senses, particularly through touch. He often looked to his father, Nazim Armağan, for guidance. He started to take interest in learning about the world at the age of 6.

In 2004, he was the subject of a study of human perception, conducted by the psychologist John M. Kennedy of the University of Toronto. This was to prove that, contrary to popular belief, a blind person can develop their visual prowess normally without external visual input from the outside world. In 2008 two researchers from Harvard, Amir Amedi and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, tried to find more about neuroplasticity using Armağan as a study case. Both scientists had evidence that in cases of blindness, the visual cortex acts differently from how it acts with the non-blind. Pascual-Leone has found that Braille readers use this very same area for touch. Amedi, together (with Ehud Zohary) at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found that the area is also activated in verbal memory tasks. The results they found showed that Armağan's visual cortex lit up during the drawing task, but hardly at all for verbal recall, meaning that some unused visual areas might be used in collaboration with one's needs from the brain. Moreover, in scans that were held while Armağan drew, his visual cortex signals seemed as he was seeing to the extent that a naive viewer of his scan might assume Armağan really could see. Through this study, they concluded that ″...the blind and the sighted use perspective projection in making and using tactile pictures, and pictures by the blind include the use of freehand parallel, one-point and two-point perspective″.

He has displayed his work at more than 20 exhibitions in Turkey, Italy, China, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. He has appeared several times on television and in the press in Turkey and has been on programs on Al Jazeera, BBC and ZD.

In 2009, Armağan was invited by Volvo to paint the new model S60 as part of a social media campaign. Prior to the release of the S60, Volvo asked him to paint his interpretation of the then unreleased model as a promotional piece. This was a key demonstration of his ability to sense form and perspective, as well as contrast between the landscape and the car. Armağan absorbed the information by walking around the car, highlighting the key aspects of the car model such as the hood and the side. He then depicted the car on a road using a ¾ perspective. His work was documented in a series of videos posted on Volvo's Facebook page. The resulting painting of the S60 sold on eBay for US$3,050. The Canadian non-profit charity organization World Blind Union (WBU) was the benefactor of the auction.

Other more notable works include his exhibitions for organizations such as the Art Education for the Blind, a non-profit organization aimed at making art accessible to those with visual impairment.

Armağan is married and has two children.