Unveil/Unblind

A display case exhibition
Feb. 26 - Mar 9, 2025
Fine Arts Building C, University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, USA

Paranoia detective case displays the trajectory of institutional diversity in the historical, cultural, and political canon of the USA, from digital archives and news, as well as ethnographic documentations (photos and visual journals.) Through low-tech materials in design research and making process, I came to understand how diversity is institutionalized and how institution diversifies itself.

While diversity helps this multicultural nation accumulate wealth and have global impacts, it is often exploited, misrepresented, and denied due to the engraved history of racism. Just like how ‘racism’ was undermined and covered with ‘diversity’ after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, ‘diversity’ is now displaced with ‘colorblind’ ‘merit-based’ institution when Critical Race Theories are banned, LGBTQIA+ communities are threatened, and immigrants are massively deported. All for the return of Western epistemology in Florida and high-tech efficiency in the USA.

This is a part of design research on institutional diversity in design education, built on the scholarships of Postcolonial Studies, Critical Race Theories, Freirean Critical Pedagogy, and Autoethnography from Design Anthropology. I built on Sara Ahmed’s postcolonial feminist works on Institutional Diversity (@feministkilljoyatwork) and critical, political contributions to design education by the Design & Oppression Network (@designeopressao).