Passport
2020

Since my passport was expired I wanted to invite an artist to use this space in the re-issue as a platform for an exhibition, where the work can travel along.

The artist Muhammad Muzammil Khan who is living in Karachi, Pakistan did a commissioned portrait painting. A photograph of this painting was then used as a profile picture and placed inside the passport.

If the world is like a house with 203 rooms as the nation states, the passport functions like a key. Through complex international relations that were established throughout history and only increasing in recent years, this leads to travel restrictions and difficulties for many people. A highly unequal distribution of these keys is spread throughout the house. People from a room labelled „Germany“ posses 159 keys, while people from the room labelled „Pakistan“ have keys to only 25 other rooms. This underlying injustice in accessibility is opposed to a basic right of free movement.

The artwork slipped into the passport can travel using the format of this document like a Trojan Horse. At the same time the work stays of course hidden in this rarely shown document... it reveals as it conceals.

The exhibition period runs for 10 years until the passport expires again.