“Alien Nation” was a large scale performance that ruminated on the impending plight of climate immigrants worldwide. For this site-specific performance, 24 costumed individuals traversed the museum’s second floor rotunda and engaged viewers in a mysterious and evocative shadow-casting journey. The performers walked and spun in circles before discretely descending the elevator to join the 1,200 viewers who were enjoying an accompanying earthly soundscape. The performers continued on their way through the crowd with a procession that took them around the block, down a ramp, and back into the museum through the loading dock.

In “Alien Nation” I chose to focus on climate-immigrants, as opposed to immigrants, as a way to implicate us all. I separated the performers into two groups, the aliens and the climate immigrants, and they were costumed accordingly. The aliens wore a variety of colorful garments with bodily extensions that often recalled the archetype of the scapegoat. The climate-immigrants wore plastic ponchos with painted hats and black hair over their face. The unknown identities of the 24 individuals created an eerie and surprising experience that reinforced our collective North American relationship toward immigrants.

“Alien Nation” is part of my ongoing series “The Nobodies” (2009–present), where I explore what it means to be a disenfranchised member of society in North America by embodying the abstract concept of nobody.

In these performances I make colorful sculptural garments fitted to the human body that create other-worldly experiences for the viewer. I revel in the simultaneous visibility and invisibility that the garments bring to the wearer. During these performances the audience members are invited to play a part in the act of nobodying, an operation that consists of making somebody nobody. All of a sudden Nothing becomes individualized, becomes body and eyes, and becomes no one.