“Passport, Please!”: Subversive Resistance at the Checkpoint

Between 2016 and 2017, artist Mahmoud Obaidi exhibited his installation, Fair Skies, at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. In the installation, he included a series of stop-motion animation videos featuring plastic dolls. The videos re-enacted an actual confrontation he experienced while attempting to board a plane at the George Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas, in 2009. The piece critiques travel restrictions and race/ethnic-based profiling placed on individuals originating from Arab and/or Muslim-majority nations. In 2018, Nadia Gohar created Self Portrait (Passport Photo Do’s & Don’ts), a photo-based piece that consisted of self-portraits of the artist wearing various articles of clothing framed within passport-sized prints. Some photographs depict Gohar wearing glasses, a white hijab, or a black niqab; other images are over- or underexposed. Her piece responds to the restrictions placed on passport and citizenship applications, photos, and how certain cultural or religious signifiers deter approval. In the third example, artist Khaled Jarrar affirms Palestinian statehood by employing passports and postage stamps emblazoned with symbols associated with Palestinian culture. Live and Work in Palestine (2009–) uses official travel documents, like the passport book, as a symbol of resistance against occupation. The passport book and airport checkpoints serve as performative spaces/objects where subjects must both affirm and censor their identity(-ies) depending on geographical and religious identifiers. I position these artworks through a critical, yet satirical lens that evaluates the continued practice of racial, ethnic, and religious profiling used by border protection/enforcement agencies like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) — the federal agency within the United States Department of Homeland Security. Throughout this article, I will argue how each piece magnifies profiling that is often enacted and enforced by airport security, checkpoints, and border patrol agencies as a form of corporeal control and humiliation. These restrictive practices are still employed, if not amplified, in an era of (un)fair skies.