“We are witnessing the shaping up of a world more and more devoted to separation” – Paulo S. H. Favrero.

Favrero’s article is a propsotion of viewing emerging digital words, such as those created in Virtual Reality, through a decolonialist lens. As we are living in an era of post-globalisation, to avoid a growing separation and disconnect from our wider global community, it is imperative to invest in decolonialist thought.

When looking at art, a decolonialst lens is often overlooked, as it is politicised. Drawing on ideas from Sara Ahmed’s On being Included (2012), accepting an institution (institutions, whether that be the gallery or the university, is where art exists and is validated) as built on colonialst structures is to admit to an inherent racism / bigotry, which has brandished the image of what we have come to accept as art. To admit the bigotry would be to unlearn this “brandished image” of art, and therefore everything academia has built in the field of art would have to be deconstructed and rebuilt.

With Virtual Reality being so wrapped up in modernity compared to other art forms, it is easy to apply decolonialist though to the way in which we view our experiences in VR. Favrero proposes that VR is to be looked at through the lens of Buddhist Philosophy. Virtual Reality is largely image based; in Buddhist philosophy, and other religious contexts, images function as “portals”. Favrero is therefore proposing the idea that Visrtual Reality is not just a visual experience that we appreciate for its aesthetic qualities, but rather a world which we immerse ourselves in and can naviagte, completely seperate the one we’d just come from, before placing the headset over our eyes.

In Buddhist thought, seeing invloves the whole body. Virtual Reality is based on a similar concept, where it draws attention to the space between ‘the self’ and ‘the other’- attention is being drawn to the relation between the body and the mind. Not only is this alluding to the aforementioned Buddhist thought, but also the principle of non duality. Virtual reality provides a fragmented map of reality, or the scene that you are being placed in. Fragmentation is what bring Buddhist philosophy and VR close to each other.