This installation of "Flag In a Suitcase" was created for a protest rally in support of keeping immigrant families together. When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) orders a person deported, they or their loved ones are allowed to pack one suitcase whose content cannot exceed 25 pounds. A lifetime is condensed into a single container and thus this suitcase is a container of both what is lived and what is now unlived as a result of deportation. Each story is depicted as a visual narrative and is linked through movement in a counterclockwise direction around the suitcase.
This 1930's suitcase is from another period of mass deportation when over one-half million Mexicans and their American children who were US citizens, were deported from the USA. The bottom of the suitcase is lined with 65 year-old newspapers with headlines eerily matching our current headlines: war and occupation, racism, and our precarious relationship with Russia.
The battered suitcase reflects our battered and broken immigration policy .These images highlight that many immigrants flee because of war and violence triggered by US foreign policy and by their authoritarian governments at home. The previous administration's animus towards immigrants from Latin America and immigrants of color (few refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have been allowed entry into the US) is characterized in several anti-immigrant policies. ICE deportation ends many of the dreams that immigrants now carry back with them as they leave what is familiar behind.
The Dominican flag highlights a quote by Jeff Sessions made on the Senate floor prior to becoming Attorney General in the previous administration. The suitcase acts as a plinth as the flag unfurls out of the suitcase and the images are assembled around the suitcase to create a contemplative space that the viewer may move around. The pastel image drawn on the top of the suitcase depicts the narrative of family separation and detention that characterized the previous administration’s policy at the southern border. As the viewer walks around the suitcase they engage various stories. The counterclockwise movement also echoes the movement of displacement and deportation.
Video shot by Kara Koirtyohann.
