this holds no legal value.
installation view, this holds no legal value., mixed media installation, 2024 three archival inkjet prints of photo performances on an open scanner bed, face mounted on acrylic, 40x30”, 2024 untitled #1, archival inkjet print of photo performance on an open scanner bed, face mounted on acrylic, 40x30”, 2024 untitled #2, archival inkjet print of photo performance on an open scanner bed, face mounted on acrylic, 40x30”, 2024 untitled #3, archival inkjet print of photo performance on an open scanner bed, face mounted on acrylic, 40x30”, 2024 untitled #4, inkjet poem written by the artist, photocopy transferred onto wall with select words redacted in sharpie, 50x45”, 2024 detail view, untitled #4, 2024 still from one of two channel video with stereo channel sound (projected on opposing walls of the installation), 3 mins, played on loop, 2024 [see excerpt]
its title taken from the statement made by a county
clerk employee when returning my signed marriage
certificate to me—a banal bureaucratic formality to
avoid mix-ups with the official copy—this installation
teases out the poetic and political undercurrents of this
phrase via the certificate’s intersection between the
geopolitical context of my partner and i seeking an
avenue to leave egypt and our ambivalent relationship
to state-sanctioned gay marriage in the usa. through an
un-archiving that centers an aesthetic of opacity,
fragmentation, and estrangement, this installation
creates works entirely from the sights and sounds of
the scanner to ask: what is at stake in the imperative of
the scan (whose etymology stems from tracking the
rhythms of a poem’s meter) for reproducing legible
forms of embodiment and relationality, and how
might these machinations begin to be turned inside out?
back to installation
clerk employee when returning my signed marriage
certificate to me—a banal bureaucratic formality to
avoid mix-ups with the official copy—this installation
teases out the poetic and political undercurrents of this
phrase via the certificate’s intersection between the
geopolitical context of my partner and i seeking an
avenue to leave egypt and our ambivalent relationship
to state-sanctioned gay marriage in the usa. through an
un-archiving that centers an aesthetic of opacity,
fragmentation, and estrangement, this installation
creates works entirely from the sights and sounds of
the scanner to ask: what is at stake in the imperative of
the scan (whose etymology stems from tracking the
rhythms of a poem’s meter) for reproducing legible
forms of embodiment and relationality, and how
might these machinations begin to be turned inside out?
back to installation