Vergence: An Orientalist Dystopia

Created for the exhibition "Look Here!" (2018), this installation references the “Jaali,” or decorative screen, which has long been used as a device for segregating genders and spaces in South Asian culture. Using this structure as a trope, artist Nirmal Raja surrounded the viewer with a deceptively decorative screen inscribed with a listing of ongoing hate crimes against South Asian Americans sourced from the South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) website. She asked viewers to exercise “vergence”- an ophthalmic term that refers to the focus and alignment of eye movements. The viewers have the choice to focus on this list or look through the screen toward the blue lake beyond and ignore the violence that is happening around them. By giving the audience agency to make their own connections and come to their own conclusions, Raja hopes to bring attention to how our perceptions of the “other” have been mediated historically, and how we make choices that unconsciously or consciously reflect bias and apathy.

Photography by Kevin Miyazaki.