Bound is a participatory artwork in which 300 handmade passport facsimiles were shipped to individuals around the world. The recipients added their own images and stories to create a major collaborative artwork that explores the vast histories of identity, migration, ancestry, and legacies. These passport reproductions were sent on a first-come, first-served basis. Passports are hot-stamped by Biruta Auna.

UPDATE: The sign up portal is now closed as all 300 spots have been filled.

For those of you who signed up, we’d love to see your work! Please use the hashtags #NotionsOfExile and #NotionsOfExilePassports and tag us @wpadc when sharing your work.

Above photo submitted by Norma Markley

*NOTE: these “passports” are artworks and not legal state documents

Faride Mereb is a Venezuelan artist, award-winning book designer, teacher, researcher, and founder of publishing house Ediciones Letra Muerta. She currently lives in NYC with her husband, where she teaches and designs. Mereb is a visiting scholar at Columbia University exploring North and South Americas’ hybridity through its printing and book history.

Notions of Exile is a virtual exhibition and series of programs, co-curated by Fabiola R. Delgado and Faride Mereb. The project explores the cultural influence of the largest recorded refugee crisis in the Americas—the forced migration of six million Venezuelans from their homeland—using Venezuelan writer and journalist Aquiles Nazoa’s stories of exile and migration as a metaphorical “table” around which the co-curators have gathered artists from Venezuela and its diaspora. The participants include Génesis Alayón, Leonardo Almao, Miguel Braceli, Deborah Castillo, Alexander Chaparro, Gabriela García, Mercedes Golip, Samoel González, Franklin Hurtado, Diana López, Henry Rueda, Henry Solórzano, Ugo Ulive, Graciela Yáñez Vicentini, and Luis Moreno Villamediana.