Embraced Status (US Visa), 2022

36"x54"

Hand weaved on a jacquard loom.

It has been so long that I have been thinking about the documents, papers, or forms of relationships with immigrants. It is also ironic that in all those forms and identification numbers, an immigrant is known and referred to as "Alien" as if one traveled from another planet to arrive here in the United States. We all know the USA is a country, and all immigrants are humans, not aliens from other worlds. As an international student who entered the US with my visa and could continue staying in the country legally while my visa has never been and wasn't supposed to be renewed, I decided to recreate it as a textile piece on a larger scale. I wove it almost 43 times bigger than the actual size using a jacquard loom. So, here, the direct and sustained engagement that I experienced with the materials and the form of making became an inseparable part of me, precisely like what I experience in my daily life as an alien. I am not separate from my alien identity.