The Passport Project: Representing Indigeneity, diaspora, belonging, and (im)possible movement(s) in the Passport works by Abdi Osman

This study focuses on an artwork by Somali-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Abdi Osman called The Passport Project (2017) that features four photographic portraits of the artist, alongside his Canadian passport, printed on large-scale scores of linen that are suspended from the ceiling and visible one after the other. The installation’s fragmented spatiality evokes experiences of checkpoints at border crossings, underscoring the performativity of the passport to both engender as well as inhibit one’s transnational movement and sense of national belonging. In doing so, the project complicates representations and readings of cultural identities including Black, queer, and Muslim, to reveal complex subjectivities.