Self Portrait as a Power Structure

The artwork begins with the administrative traces through which states have recorded and regulated his movement. Visa and border stamps accumulated over decades in Barakeh’s passport were isolated exactly as they appeared on its pages, preserving their blurred edges, smudges, misalignments, and printing errors. Working backwards from these impressions, Barakeh re-etched each mark into rubber, producing a physical stamp in the precise form left by the original.

The ink for each stamp was formulated to match its corresponding impression. Each wooden body was crafted from a tree species associated with the country it represents. Through these material decisions, the work reconstructs the apparatus behind every mark. What once existed as an imprint applied to the artist by an external authority becomes an object he can temporarily control.

On June 2023, the stamps were activated in Reverse Hierarchy, an entrance performance presented during Weaving the Present, Shaping the Future at The MAC Belfast. Guests of colour were stamped and admitted without delay, while other guests were required to queue, answer questions, and undergo identity checks. By temporarily reversing the usual direction of racial profiling, the performance transformed the work’s symbolic inversion into a lived encounter with privilege, scrutiny, and controlled movement.