Immigration as art material

Betül AksuImmigration as art material
2022
Scanned black-and-white image, post-it note
Commissioned by Journeys Festival International

This artwork features a scanned black-and-white photograph of sea waves with a yellow post-it note placed on its surface. The post-it bears the handwritten phrase “immigration as art material.” The image of the sea suggests movement, displacement, and border crossing, while the post-it introduces an administrative element reflecting the bureaucratic aspects of immigration.

The work is based on the artist’s experience with immigration policies in the United Kingdom. From 2015 to 2020, visa restrictions prevented her from working as a freelance artist in London, limiting her to jobs within her allowed category of work. After returning to Turkey, she was invited to work in the UK as an immigrant artist between 2021 and 2022 under different conditions. This shift highlights how legal and political frameworks influence who can engage in artistic work and under what circumstances. The precarious nature of this status illustrates the instability often experienced by immigrant artists. While the piece uses immigration as material for artistic exploration, it also gestures toward the risk of reducing complex, lived experiences to symbolic or aesthetic objects. By literally turning immigration into “art material,” the work critiques how serious and multifaceted realities are sometimes simplified into concepts or trends within the art world.