Artists Hamishi Farah and Arahmaiani Confront Border Control Through Graphic Novel and Installation

Hamishi Farah's graphic novel 'Airport Love Theme' fictionalizes their 12-hour detention and deportation from Los Angeles International Airport in April 2016 while traveling from Melbourne to a New York art fair. The novel explores racial profiling through a psychosexual love triangle, avoiding what Farah calls the 'trauma economy.' Indonesian artist Arahmaiani's installation '11 June 2002' recreates her 2002 experience of seven-hour interrogation at LAX while transiting to Canada, depicting a hotel room where a guard insisted on staying overnight. Both works examine the surreal contradictions of border enforcement. Arahmaiani's piece includes Coca-Cola vending machines with German slogans and a Quran on a pillow, referencing her use of commercial symbols to critique globalization. Farah's novel includes real incidents like a guard screening 'Coming to America' during detention, with the DVD later exhibited as 'Horcrux' in 2020. Arahmaiani has faced death threats and arrest in Indonesia for works like 'Etalase' (1994), which placed condoms near a Quran. Despite offers of foreign passports, she retains Indonesian citizenship. Farah's exhibition 'Dog Heaven 2: How Sweet the Wound of Jesus Tastes' runs at Kunsthalle Fribourg through July 31. The artists' experiences highlight how border regimes enforce racial hierarchies while the art world's promised mobility often fails.