"13 Artists On: Immigration," by Zoë Lescaze, The New York Times Style Magazine
Art doesn’t just reflect the world — it engages with it. Some 10 million to 15 million undocumented currently live in the United States, and their presence is the subject of fierce debate. So for the second installment of our series , we asked 13 contemporary artists — Alfredo Jaar, Raúl de Nieves and Hayv Kahraman among them — to submit works, many of them new and being published for the first time, in response to the subject of immigration. Here are their pieces and written statements.
Hayv Kahraman
Born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1981.
The placid mirage on a strip of the road reminded me of my country. For a moment I felt transported. The image of the desert spoke covertly of my past and future. It was as if temporality was absent. Two distinct spaces that in reality had declared war on one another, and yet here they were in front of me, indistinguishable. I caught myself suddenly and gained composure, reminding myself that I am in a land that was/is currently at war with my homeland.