08/11 ’24
Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists
🕐 Since November 2024
📍 British Library, London (UK)
🔗 blogs.bl.uk/asian-and-african/2024/11/passports.html
🙏🏻 Daniel Lowe
‘Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists’ display installed in the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures gallery © Daniel Lowe
“Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists” is a new and timely addition to the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery organized by Daniel Lowe, the curator of Arabic collections. In a single display case, eight works by seven artists from Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey repurpose the quotidian formats of state-issued documents into analogies for the increasing power of state control over travel privileges and identity formation.
Majdi Hadid’s Documents that I needed to travel outside Palestine (2007)—first published during the same year in the book entitled Subjective Atlas of Palestine—is a panoply of 19 documents and travel proofs that the artist-designer needed in order to travel from Ramallah to Frankfurt. The documentation includes three passports, two identity cards, and assorted transportation tickets and stubs. Hadid’s meticulous array of papers underlines the Kafkaesque process of Palestinian travel, suggesting that the individual state institutions, corporations, and agencies issuing these documents contribute to the piecemeal international securitization affecting Palestinian autonomy and mobility. Jana Traboulsi’s Sorry for Not Attending (2013) was conceived in response to the excessively cumbersome British visa application, which forced her to miss the opening of a Tate Modern exhibition that included examples of her work. Traboulsi’s cheerfully collaged materials referencing Europe, the US, Palestine, and even Asteroid B612—places then difficult or impossible for Lebanese passport holders to access—satirically highlight the inherent prejudice inherent in border policies of the Global North. Gözde İlkin produced Hususi Passport (2009) while participating in the “Reciprocal Visit” workshop at Istanbul’s Depo art space, sponsored by nonprofit artist-run initiative Apartment Project. The age-old social convention of reciprocal neighborly visits is juxtaposed with the coveted travel privileges of the “Hususi” or Special/Green Passport, which is available to certain Turkish civil servants and white-collar professionals and their relatives, permitting visa-free travel to most European countries. → Read more
Installation view of "Passports and Identity Documents in the Hands of Artists," at the British Library, London, 2025. Courtesy the British Library Board.
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