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. Where the solo work placed the body on stage, 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, follow the line, wait at the numbered station, sit when told. Some visitors obeyed. Some did not. That choice is part of the work.

At each station, a different mechanism operates. A spinning wheel spells out REGULARIZING, let chance decide your next step. A 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 cleanly. 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 ten minutes, for an hour — are the body inside that system?

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mixed media installation • 2025-2026