I am different because I can do it* Stranger belongs to me

Bani Abidi, EsRAP, Aziz Hazara, Lucas Odahara, Setareh Shahbazi
"Can we imagine a country to which we can all belong, where citizenship is claimed through acts of love and care, where the 'stranger' resides in each of us and is the still unknown, unfamiliar part of us and within us that we want to know? The search for knowledge requires that we welcome the stranger and at the same time become strangers to ourselves in order to really get to know ourselves and each other." (Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, Borderlanders: A Political Concept for Repair)
How can we simultaneously feel a sense of belonging to the different histories and difficult geographies of which we are a part? What practices of belonging would allow us to make space for our intertwined differences? Rather than being afraid of the unfamiliar, might it not enable us to create the communities and types of home we need to live together in the world? In their works, the artists in the exhibition create forms of belonging that invite longing and our inner strangers to become a significant part of the collective being.
I am different because I can do it. Stranger belongs to me is the concluding part of the TAXISPALAIS trilogy on questions of coexistence and how we can think and practice discourses around multiple belonging more adequately in Western Europe.
Curated by Nina Tabassomi & Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
*Title from a song line by EsRAP