Artist Statement: Conceptually driven and thematic, my work is a way to process everything that is going on around me. Experiences are distilled and sewn together by research in the studio and through reading. Recent political rhetoric has shifted the direction of my work towards notions of identity, belonging and assimilation. My practice has become a series of propositions, a way of bridging the sociopolitical with the aesthetic. I invite the viewer to experience what is felt rather than what they hear in the news through installation and haptic strategies.

Fault Lines:

  • Gaza Strip
  • Syria / Turkey
  • North Korea / South Korea
  • Mexico / USA
  • India / Pakistan

Five fabric panels suspended in a row from ceiling overhead, inspired by the door hangings from Gujarat, India
Embroidery on silk organza
21” X 48” each


“Fault lines” draws parallels between a country’s borders and a home’s doorway – both interstitial spaces that divide the insider and the outsider. Door hangings like the ones used in Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection have been used to welcome good spirits and guests into the home for centuries and are also deeply tied to the Indian aesthetic and spiritual culture. Borders on the other hand define a country, acting as gatekeepers for a secure and safe nation. But they are also portals to other places, to safety, prosperity and security. However, they are often the most treacherous and contentious passageways and remain examples of a divided and fragmented globe. In this work, I use the interstitial form of a door hanging to speak about some of the most dangerous borders in the world at the current moment– the Gaza Strip, Syria and Turkey, US and Mexico, India and Pakistan, North Korea and South Korea. I imagine what it would be like if these borders became welcome ports and the line between insider and outsider is blurred.
I bring in my long-term interest in ritual, the body’s relationship to space, and viewer engagement. The extensive history of narrative embroidery techniques became an inspiration to create these “door hangings”. By walking under this row of door hangings, the viewers symbolically cross the most dangerous land borders in the world. I urge viewers to think about the earth as a global village and borders as portals for human and material exchanges rather than fault lines where lives are lost.

 Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee. She approaches her practice as a process of sifting and communicating sensations and ideas with varied materials and processes. Conceptually driven and thematic, her work straddles the personal and the political and is a response to lived experiences that are distilled and strengthened by research in the studio and through reading. She examines notions of memory, identity, place and belonging. Performative collaborations with other artists and the larger community have recently become part of her practice. Occasionally, she curates exhibitions and organizes and facilitates situations that articulate moments of connection and empathy.