CONTRATO

The circulation of images, ideas and objects seems to know no boundaries in this global juncture.
Meanwhile, institutional control points more and more to another objective: the displacement of people.
How to cross and displace symbolically these borders – of hermetic appearance – is perhaps the question that will allow this artist duo to resignify their migratory experience.
Contrato aims to generate a space of reflection where the personal becomes political, where vigilance goes beyond the merely bureaucratic to become a tool for examining intimacy. The Documents presented in this installation are the same ones that were filled in, signed and delivered to the Immigration Office during the first years of life together in Paris.
Contrato emerges a a re-appropriation of the identitary space in which this couple has been forced to define itself, in order to create their future. The accumulation of papers accounts for the many layers that the French administration went through in this process: from documents that prove their co-habitation, up to their financial records, or public declarations of monogamy. Paper becomes the means by which control mechanisms access the intimate sphere, evidence of the veracity of their personal commitment. The relationship between documents and documentation is explored in this work, where these papers – used as screens and material objects – evidences the blurred boundaries between the private and the public.