“Indian Americans: Who are WE?” asks an opening text panel. Stepping into the exhibition’s representational embrace, visitors are reflected in mirrors strategically hung on a wall amid family photographs of people clad in saris, wearing sunglasses, waving Indian flags. The Ghosh family at Samuel P Taylor State Park, 1970. The Persards in Brandon, Florida, 1988. As Benedict Anderson wrote in Imagined Communities, his seminal work on nationalism, “How strange it is to need another’s help to learn that this naked baby in the yellowed photograph, sprawled happily on rug or cot, is you.” Here, Indian American viewers are invited to see themselves through the taxonomic eye of the Natural History museum. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan writes about a new exhibition that strives to present Indian Americans on their own terms.
Posted on: Sat, 03 May 2014 08:45:13 +0000