LIFE IS SHORT
Moawya Al Khadra

installation, audio, 1:09 min, 2019

The installation juxtaposes the slogan “Life is short, buy the shoes” with a text spoken by the artist in which he explains his sense of not belonging to any particular geographical space due to his nomadic life. Holding the passport of a country he has never been to, he questions the notion of an identity defined through the bureaucratic means of a piece of paper. With its grid structure the installation mirrors such social and political structures in which copies of official documents have been cut to fit in. Using humor and sarcasm the artist comments on the arbitrariness of such constructs in a time where lifestyles are increasingly mobile. 

My name is Moawya Al Khadra, Palestinian born in Kuwait, raised in Syria, worked in Dubai for the past seven years. Holding a Moroccan Passport, a country I have never been to. I don’t have any sense of belonging to a geographical space. A place on a map... I belong to nowhere, I belong to everywhere. I am an outsider, I am a seeker. My passports and identity cards don’t define me. So how could frontiers design my intents? We always open doors and our life changes, our path changes... sometimes out of control. Sometimes... we choose the doors, sometimes we are looking for keys... The point of existence is what makes us alive. Why is our identity affected by the political and social environment? Why are we so limited with the papers and codes? How do we construct our behaviors and acts in that environment?