The Refraction Series brings together cultural, metaphysical and generational references, inviting the viewer to consider society’s perception of women with a different awareness.

The vintage phoropter—a device introduced in the early 1900s to test a person’s eyesight, also known as “refractive error”–becomes both a physical and metaphorical framework for an assemblage sculpture. Its introduction occurred at approximately the same time as the establishment of the All India Women’s Conference in India, and when women were granted the right to vote in the United States.

The two original lenses of the phoropter have been replaced with vintage photos of girls and women from India, which was perhaps the first time they had been photographed—their image recorded to be “seen.” The photos metaphorically embody girls and women from all generations, both collective and individually, and simultaneously honor both their energetic presence as well as their memory.

An additional lens—added at the top as a metaphorical “third eye” or the eye of awareness—is engraved with the phrase “Thank God for Making Me a Woman” in Hindru© (a melding of Hindi and Urdu created by the artist). This alternative to the daily prayer Orthodox men say, “Thank God For Not Making Me A Woman,” with the “Not” removed, subverts the traditional text’s denigration of women. It shifts it into a veneration, and transforms it into a channel to meditate broadly on gender status, as well as a transcultural veneration of women.

In the age of technology, when our vision is now tested digitally and our world often viewed electronically, The Refraction Series invites the viewer to survey society’s perception of women, and to contemplate the shifts that will foster an evolving perspective.--

Ghiora Aharoni