Exhibition
Location
East Sibley Hallway
East Sibley Hall
Contact
Department of Architecture
Abstract
“There is nothing illegal about being human.” — Elie Wiesel
This experimental study deconstructs the immigration timeline of the United States into an architectural relief, exposing how policy, language, and enforcement have governed the lives of residents and travelers over time. Tracing major acts from the 19th century to the present, the work approaches the US immigration system as a designed apparatus of governance for the classification and surveillance of individuals.
By layering federal policy language and media rhetoric with human narratives, the research visualizes the statistical violence embedded within the archive and its presence as a landscape of exclusion. The spine is organized through fragmented moments of ideological and systemic restructuring, making visible the shifting conditions that determine the boundaries of permission and belonging.
Rather than presenting immigration as fixed, the work frames human movement as an evolving bureaucratic infrastructure. As rhetorical escalation becomes an institutional method for permission, dehumanization remains normalized through legal precedent. This timeline serves as an unfinished mechanism to humanize these stories, uncovering how violence and exclusion are sustained through the architectures of law that continue to structure the future.
