This text was submitted as a proposal to the apexart INTL25 Open Call
In the face of rising fascism across North America, cultural identity is once again thrust into the spotlight. This exhibition shifts the conversation from the notion of identity to the mechanisms of identification through which it is enforced. We examine the bureaucratic labyrinth that underpins the so-called "free world" and its global counterparts—an intricate web of paperwork, visas, permits, and passports that shapes lives, restricts movement, and defines who belongs.
Beyond the multicultural façade of North American cities like Montreal, there exists a hidden reality—a vast, entangled system of bureaucracy that governs who is seen, heard, and allowed to exist within its borders. While these cities pride themselves on cosmopolitanism and openness, they remain marked by unequal regimes of mobility where migrant communities are caught in a web of paperwork and restrictions. This exhibition confronts that reality.
"A Border Is Made of Papers" invites the public to reflect on the pervasive influence of bureaucratic systems and how they sustain border regimes limiting the freedom and mobility of people including artists. The works in this exhibition draw attention to the ways these systems impact individuals’ daily lives while also highlighting the particular challenges faced by artists who have to navigate borders too.
This exhibition features artists whose works engage with the myriad forms of documentation—papers, visas, and identification documents—that both create and reinforce borders. The artists featured confront and subvert these constructs, offering a powerful critique of the systems that confine and control.
A Kenyan artist's paper installations take the artist countless visa applications to soak them into water, releasing their residual traces that he then uses to create new paper. In this process, the artist conjures the erased afterlives of these documents, symbolizing the loss and displacement hiding behind the bureaucratic machinery.
Another artist's abstract paintings repurpose rejection letters from over a hundred requests for citizenship, using these documents as raw material. His work exposes the constructed nature of these bureaucratic forces, revealing the power dynamics at play and the arbitrary systems that define who is allowed to belong.
A first nations artist uses traditional beadwork to craft ID cards, merging indigenous cultural practices with the modern bureaucratic process. His work challenges the colonial systems of identification and questions the validity of the documents that define who one is.
A Korean artist's poignant pieces interweave her own experience of struggling to cross European borders with the legal cases of a migrant’s death. Through her work, the artist highlights the human cost of these bureaucratic barriers and the personal toll they take on those who are caught within them.
Each of these artists, displaced in their own ways, draws upon their personal struggles with documentation to reveal how borders—though often seen as fixed and immovable—are, in fact, constructed, fragile, and open to contestation. In doing so, they challenge us to question the validity of the very systems that claim to define who belongs and who does not.
In the face of rising fascism across North America, cultural identity is once again thrust into the spotlight. This exhibition shifts the conversation from the notion of identity to the mechanisms of identification through which it is enforced. We examine the bureaucratic labyrinth that underpins the so-called "free world" and its global counterparts—an intricate web of paperwork, visas, permits, and passports that shapes lives, restricts movement, and defines who belongs.
Beyond the multicultural façade of North American cities like Montreal, there exists a hidden reality—a vast, entangled system of bureaucracy that governs who is seen, heard, and allowed to exist within its borders. While these cities pride themselves on cosmopolitanism and openness, they remain marked by unequal regimes of mobility where migrant communities are caught in a web of paperwork and restrictions. This exhibition confronts that reality.
"A Border Is Made of Papers" invites the public to reflect on the pervasive influence of bureaucratic systems and how they sustain border regimes limiting the freedom and mobility of people including artists. The works in this exhibition draw attention to the ways these systems impact individuals’ daily lives while also highlighting the particular challenges faced by artists who have to navigate borders too.
This exhibition features artists whose works engage with the myriad forms of documentation—papers, visas, and identification documents—that both create and reinforce borders. The artists featured confront and subvert these constructs, offering a powerful critique of the systems that confine and control.
A Kenyan artist's paper installations take the artist countless visa applications to soak them into water, releasing their residual traces that he then uses to create new paper. In this process, the artist conjures the erased afterlives of these documents, symbolizing the loss and displacement hiding behind the bureaucratic machinery.
Another artist's abstract paintings repurpose rejection letters from over a hundred requests for citizenship, using these documents as raw material. His work exposes the constructed nature of these bureaucratic forces, revealing the power dynamics at play and the arbitrary systems that define who is allowed to belong.
A first nations artist uses traditional beadwork to craft ID cards, merging indigenous cultural practices with the modern bureaucratic process. His work challenges the colonial systems of identification and questions the validity of the documents that define who one is.
A Korean artist's poignant pieces interweave her own experience of struggling to cross European borders with the legal cases of a migrant’s death. Through her work, the artist highlights the human cost of these bureaucratic barriers and the personal toll they take on those who are caught within them.
Each of these artists, displaced in their own ways, draws upon their personal struggles with documentation to reveal how borders—though often seen as fixed and immovable—are, in fact, constructed, fragile, and open to contestation. In doing so, they challenge us to question the validity of the very systems that claim to define who belongs and who does not.
Hend Ben Salah is a Ph.D candidate in art history focusing on the politics of exhibition-making across uneven geographies. She co-founded the collective Pour une histoire de l'art engagée.
Myriam Amri is an anthropologist and visual artist exploring materiality, capitalism, and the quotidian across (post)colonial geographies. She is the co-founder of the experimental collective Asameena.
Valeria Téllez Niemeyer is a designer and art history Ph.D. candidate who explores the urban night, counter-cartography, and environmental issues through interdisciplinary projects.
Myriam Amri is an anthropologist and visual artist exploring materiality, capitalism, and the quotidian across (post)colonial geographies. She is the co-founder of the experimental collective Asameena.
Valeria Téllez Niemeyer is a designer and art history Ph.D. candidate who explores the urban night, counter-cartography, and environmental issues through interdisciplinary projects.
apexart’s program supporters past and present include the National Endowment for the Arts, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Kettering Family Foundation, the Buhl Foundation, The Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Spencer Brownstone, the Kenneth A. Cowin Foundation, Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., William Talbott Hillman Foundation/Affirmation Arts Fund, the Fifth Floor Foundation, the Consulate General of Israel in New York, The Puffin Foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and administered by LMCC, funds from NYSCA Electronic Media/Film in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.