Political historian Benedict Anderson has argued that nations exist as “imagined communities,” where those within their boundaries share an imagined sense of belonging shaped by political, cultural, and religious institutions. This imagined solidarity enables governments to rule and, in the name of nationhood, exercise power and control. This exhibition stages a confrontation between the ideals of nationhood and the realities of erasure, dispossession, and violence experienced by vulnerable bodies.

WE ARE NOT OKAY brings together works by immigrant and diasporic artists that confront the violence and rhetoric of nationalism as it shapes the lives of immigrant, undocumented, and other marginalized communities. This rhetoric reinforces not only geographic borders but also ideological ones, as those who are marked as not belonging are presented as threats to social, political, cultural, and religious cohesion.
Refusing narratives of resilience or triumph, WE ARE NOT OKAY holds space for rage, grief, and dissent, demanding attention to lives under duress. Drawing from The Immigrant Artist Biennial’s upcoming themes addressing immigrant experiences of fear, self-censorship, disconnection, and isolation in this current political climate, this exhibition exposes how the rhetoric of nationhood marginalizes and alienates difference by focusing on the body as a site of both vulnerability and political control. WE ARE NOT OKAY foregrounds artists who reveal the structures of violence and exclusion embedded in current versions of America. Drawing on theorist Judith Butler’s notion that vulnerability is not merely a condition to be endured but a political, relational, and ethical stance that can mobilize collective action, this project positions vulnerability as a shared ontological condition–a site of political and ethical agency.

In Natacha Voliakovsky’s powerful photograph En La Mira [Target] (2024), their body bears a bullseye drawn with blood, marking them as immigrant, queer, and female. In Illegal Alien (2023), Voliakovsky literally embeds a flag into their skin and stands before a video that highlights Trump’s harrowing remarks about immigrants. Likewise, Carlos Martiel’s work engages with body politics and the rhetoric of nationhood, soaking a national flag in the blood of undocumented immigrants to present the harsh reality of the violence inflicted upon undocumented people and asylum seekers.

The flag becomes a reoccurring motif in this exhibition, its nationalistic symbolism subverted to critique government policy, question national identity, and expose social injustices. Jamel Robinson’s potent video HOME speaks to nationhood, and the historic, systemic exclusion of the Black body. While Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez and Arleene Correa Valencia’s works directly address the lived realities of being undocumented.

Through these intersecting practices, WE ARE NOT OKAY examines how the promise of nationhood is dependent on exclusion. To mark oneself as outside is to transform vulnerability into defiance insisting on visibility and the right to exist beyond the nation’s boundaries.