The Body Weight
of Passports
A passport is commonly known as a small booklet issued by a government to identify its holder as a citizen and facilitate international travel. However, its significance extends beyond mere documentation, and its impact can vary greatly depending on one's privilege.
As stated, "Passports are not neutral. Passports are material evidence of exercising discrimination. How bodies move is unevenly and asymmetrical." [1]
To expose the less obvious qualities of a passport, I seek to explore its visual and sensorial aspects. The passport can give rise to a sense of physicality that can produce a slow body, a heavy body, and even resented one. By submerging my passport in a concrete brick, I transform the lightweight and portable booklet into a weighty object that represents the passport's heaviness and its potential to constrain and discriminate. Paradoxically, this process also strengthens the passport. The brick reinforces the notion of building walls and division, highlighting the ways in which the passport can create barriers and promote unequal mobility.
[1] Keshavarz, Mahmoud. The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.
As stated, "Passports are not neutral. Passports are material evidence of exercising discrimination. How bodies move is unevenly and asymmetrical." [1]
To expose the less obvious qualities of a passport, I seek to explore its visual and sensorial aspects. The passport can give rise to a sense of physicality that can produce a slow body, a heavy body, and even resented one. By submerging my passport in a concrete brick, I transform the lightweight and portable booklet into a weighty object that represents the passport's heaviness and its potential to constrain and discriminate. Paradoxically, this process also strengthens the passport. The brick reinforces the notion of building walls and division, highlighting the ways in which the passport can create barriers and promote unequal mobility.
[1] Keshavarz, Mahmoud. The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2019.
The Body Weight of Passports, 2022
Concrete bricks with Venezuelan passport
Dimensions: Standard UK brick size 215 x 102.5 x 65mm
Concrete brick with Venezuelan passport insert and string. Dimensions: Standard UK brick size 215 x 102.5 x 65mm
Performative sculpture designed to be carried or attached to my body. The artwork explores the effects of the biometric passport and its impact on identity, freedom of movement and privilege. By creating a physical representation of the passport, I aim to make its weight and burden tangible to the viewer. Georg Simmel's ideas on art and aesthetics are significant to the artwork's theme and meaning. Simmel believed that the aesthetic experience results from the interaction between the outer appearance and inner essence of an object. In this context, the inner essence refers to the deeper meaning and implications of the passport, while the outer appearance of the artwork is a performative physical series of actions that goes beyond its sculptural surface. This representation not only makes visible the "other" qualities of the passport, but also makes it a sensation. The artwork highlights the struggle that certain bodies face in terms of mobility.
Rabbit holes in passports controls brick, 2022.
Concrete, passport inserts, sponge.
Dimensions: Standard UK brick size 215 x 102.5 x 65mm
