Citizenship (2010)
mannequins, survival blankets, audio equipment, soundtrack.

Citizenship is a sculpture that takes the form of three life size figures sitting under loosely draped golden survival blankets. Concealed inside is an audio deck and a pair of stereo speakers which play a soundtrack of crickets chirping on a mountainside. When draped the figures form a kind of tableau and the survival blankets are simultaneously present as blankets, as clothing and as topography. The work thus conflates the depicted individuals with an imagined landscape. This deliberate misidentification of person with place is one of the ways in which the work thinks about migration and how the migrant is reduced to a cipher for elsewhereness or origin. The gold foil sheets are survival blankets – regular kit for mountaineers - but also used by relief agencies for example after an earthquake. The individuals depicted seem stuck in time, waiting for their papers to come though or camped on mountainside as they try to cross a border.