A stranger in a strange land

A Spontaneous  Site-Specific Installation
Edition: Miami Art Basel Week 2018

“These are shock blankets, such as the ones currently given to asylum-seeking refugees taken to U.S. immigration prisons. I remember seeing horrific images on TV of crying children who had been separated from their parents. They were laying on the floor behind chain-link fences, covering themselves with these shock blankets. These blankets were not meant to provide any comfort to those children, they were just a way to maintain constant body temperature. They were meant to provide homeostasis – or body stability. But what about their psychological stability? Trust me, this installation is not a political statement, but a commentary on the unnecessary suffering that many immigrants experience, specially children, as they go through traumatic experiences of displacement. Why not keep families together as their status is decided? So I meant to humanize their condition, by adorning their new homeostatic shock-blanket world with familiar elements from the domestic sphere. I took the blankets and I built the illusion of a human space - an almost-home. I brought in comfortable velvet chairs, tables, lamps, warm shoes, and pictures of my own own refugee ancestors whose eyes assured us that everything would be fine. But was I successful? The aluminum foil-like blankets were just too reflective of the lighting of the lamps. The crackling of the blankets as I moved around was an endless nuisance. The shelter I created was crooked, bizarre, and cold. It did not resemble anything familiar to the immigrant within it. I had just created further alienation....an alien-nation, really. But then I stopped... and I realized that perhaps this makes sense; I remember once having an alien number, and now, as a citizen, I am still just a naturalized alien. At best, I will always be a stranger in a strange land. With that realization, I felt better and slept well that night. Perhaps these immigrants will too, one day.