The Freedom of the Migrant.

The Freedom of the Migrant—presented at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and, the following year, at The Physics Room in Christchurch—takes its starting point from a column published in the New Zealand Herald on 26 March 2016. Written by the NZME head of business Fran O’Sullivan, the column recounted a hypothetical terrorist attack that the then Prime Minister, Sir John Key, had put to members of the Auckland business community shortly after returning from a meeting of the International Democrat Union, of which he was then chairperson—a scenario through which Key opened the question of how New Zealand might position itself to benefit from the perception of its distance from global instability.

The exhibition takes up the central themes of that hypothesis—the impact and legacy of the dominant political narratives constructed around terrorism and the refugee crisis, and the way those narratives shape collective perceptions of border control, freedom of movement, and national identity—and works them across installation, print, and archival material. (The accompanying publication of the same name is listed separately.)