Bala Thiagarajan "Not 99 Percent"

I am Bala Thiagarajan, an Indian immigrant artist based in Arvada, Colorado. My work explores identity, belonging, and the ways cultural narratives shape how people and places are seen. Through this installation, I explore the tension between visibility and invisibility, especially within spaces where certain communities are assumed to be absent or peripheral.

Not 99% began with a comment I heard repeatedly after moving to Colorado: that the state, or the American West more broadly, is “basically 99% white. Though statistically inaccurate, that assumption shapes how the region is imagined culturally, socially, and artistically. Colorado itself is only about 65% white, yet people’s perceptions of who occupies the land are often shaped by the spaces they move through daily. When social circles, neighborhoods, workplaces, or cultural institutions remain predominantly white, those environments can come to feel representative of the region as a whole.

This installation consists of one hundred almost similar but unique sculpted faces painted across a range of skin tones. Many of the non-white faces are subtly tilted within the grid, disrupting the visual order and quietly “tilting” the structure itself.

The work is not only about demographics. It is about visibility, representation, and the assumptions that shape decision-making within the arts landscape. There is often an underlying belief that predominantly white audiences are the primary supporters, collectors, or consumers of art, and these assumptions influence whose work is exhibited, funded, collected, and institutionally supported. But the contemporary West is far more diverse, layered, and interconnected than many of its dominant cultural narratives suggest.

Not 99% asks what happens when the people who already make up the landscape are fully acknowledged within it, not as exceptions or additions, but as part of the visual and cultural identity of the region itself. The work ultimately imagines a broader and more expansive understanding of the West, one that reflects the many communities, histories, and perspectives already shaping its future.