As a quiet meditation, it develops intimate psychological portraits of Muslim refugees from Middle Eastern and African countries, resettled in the United States.  Concerned with the ethics of ethnographic encounter, the artist asks: How to represent without patronizing or speaking on the behalf of others? How to generate a process of empathy and intersubjectivity? As opposed to a dominant discourse, which denies refugees full personal and political agency, this film restores their voices.

“ON EXILE…” reframes assumptions of home and belonging, and examines the complex adjustment to another culture by those who, forcibly displaced, seek safety and a new beginning.

In addition to the 25-minute video, which was commissioned by and debuted at SPACES in 2017 (in its original duration), José Carlos Teixeira also presents a series of text pieces that investigate similar issues of human displacement, migratory movement and the boundary event. Borrowing creatively from the writer and filmmaker Trihn T. Mihn-ha, these wall works, in their apparent minimalism and simplicity, require from the viewers a proximity and an intimacy that connects them to the experience of the film on display.

“Every refugee, regardless of nationality, race or creed, points to the refugee within ourselves”

(K. C. Cirtautas)