A temporary art installation resembling an emergency shelter tent is set to pop up in Sunset Park this month to highlight the challenges faced by Temporary Protected Status (TPS) seekers, its beneficiaries and asylum seekers in the US.
“A Mobile Home” will serve as both a sculpture and an immersive performance stage when it lands close to the park entrance on Sixth Avenue and 41st Street on Sept. 14, with musical, dance and spoken word performances by artists and locals throughout the afternoon.
The shelter will feature enlarged images of security screening questions from TPS applications, which the artists say will present the public with an experience that reveals the often conflicted language embedded in the bureaucratic migration processes, while also raising the question of what “home” really means.
Xenoduo is the creative group behind “A Mobile Home.” The pair — Brooklyn-based set designer and installation artist Xinan Ran and choreographer and theater artist Miguel Alejandro Castillo — met in high school, where they first started collaborating artistically. After noticing the common theme of migration in their works, they decided to start a collective that advocates for a more humane immigration process.
The idea for “A Mobile Home” came about when Castillo first applied for TPS, which the Department of Homeland Security can grant to a group of nationals it deems unsafe from returning to their homelands — Castillo’s birth country of Venezuela being among the beneficiaries.
He told Brooklyn Paper that the application process was isolating, as he had to fill out an application that posed “intense” questions “that I know have a legal and political reasoning behind them, but their effects on those receiving the questions are one of alienation.”
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The pair hope the installation will be a place for TPS beneficiaries and other immigrants in the city to come to reflect and share their own stories. The Sixth Avenue location was chosen because it is a shared space of the diverse community in Sunset Park.
“Sunset Park is a place where they actually meet and socialize, so we want to use this site as a place where we can bring people together and share stories and to find an equal meeting point of these communities,” Ran said.
Xenoduo’s other hope is that their art will help humanize the immigration process and its issues for members of the public with limited knowledge of the processes.
“We live in a city that is made of immigrants, and so much of the labor of the immigrant community is what makes the city what it is,” said Castillo. “Yet, there is such a forgetfulness or ignorance in which many people just go by their days without really pondering about this. I do think that the waves of immigration are going to get bigger and bigger as we deal with climate change and more unstable governments. Everybody needs to be on board so that we can be adaptable and care for one another.”
“A Mobile Home” will have an opening reception at 1 p.m. on Sept. 14 before it heads to Union Square on Oct. 5. To find out more about the event and installation, visit the More Art website.