behind the scenes

This project was developed as a continuation of my solo performance Act, Interrupted, which emerged from my experience navigating bureaucratic systems as an immigrant. The solo performance focused on the body, the installation places the audience inside the system itself.

The gallery is transformed into a bureaucratic space. Visitors take a ticket stamped with the word HOPE and begin their journey through a taped maze on the floor. The path suggests rules, navigate the maze, sit on the chair, wait at the numbered station. The choice to follow or not is part of the work.

At each station, a different mechanism operates. A spinning wheel spells out REGULARIZING, underneath it the folder contains instructions assigned by letter. A chair faces a corner where the wall reads WAIT HERE. Envelopes carry messages. A clock ticks throughout the entire space. In a second room, a video loop is projected: a body navigating a taped maze with no exit.

Language operates throughout as both instruction and obstruction. The paths contradict themselves. Nothing resolves here. The system is designed to keep certain bodies permanently in process, waiting, economically indispensable, yet never fully arrived.

How do mechanisms like waiting, delay, and repetition act on the body? How long can a body be kept permanently 'in process'? And what happens when the visitors — for seconds or minutes — become the body inside that system?

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mixed media installation • 2025-2026