In a time when the question of whether to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border dominates the national discourse and the question of who belongs on each side is omnipresent, two Chicago exhibits wrestle with what citizenship means today, especially for those who are deliberately and structurally denied these rights.
Educator and visual artist Fidencio Fifield- Perez, who was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, learned to hoard mail at a young age. “My mom told me to never throw away mail,” he says. “It was a way of documenting where we physically had been here, and proof that we exist in this country.”
Al Charif, a photographer, documents the memories of ten women who fled Syria for Beirut, London, and Paris in a series of videos called “Women Memories.” Among them are Ghada, a mother of Palestinian descent who has lived through two exiles—the first the collective exile after the Nakbah in 1948 when 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes, the second her own more recent exile from Syria—who arrives in Europe by sea. Another is Maissa, a religious studies student from a rural area outside Homs whose family has been decimated by the war.
The installation examines genuine belonging in both worldly and heavenly bodies. “Dimensions of Citizenship” invited representatives from the worlds of architecture and design to build what the exhibition catalog describes as spaces of healing and citizenship for all immigrants, legal or otherwise, today and in the future.
Both exhibits, “Dimension of Citizenship” and “Stateless,” call us to create a new measurement for belonging, perhaps in courtyards, dreams, and memories instead of on paper. v
Through 3/31: Mon-Sat 10 AM-5 PM, Sun noon-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan, 312-663-5554, mocp.org. F
“Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging From the Body to the Cosmos” 2/28-4/27: Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood, 773-437-6601, wrightwood659.org. F
