“Forced Displacement” , A Call To Action

Forced Displacement began when I questioned the meaning of land acknowledgments that are spoken but rarely acted upon. In a conversation with my mentor, I was challenged to transform that frustration into an act of “radical care.” This became an interactive performance dedicated to people who have been forcibly displaced.

My own story is woven into it. My maternal Kurdish family was driven from their homeland on the Iran-Iraq border more than a century ago. They were forced to resettle in central Iran, among people who did not understand their language or the tattoo patterns on their faces. I grew up witnessing the consequences of this dislocation in my mother and her sisters—women carrying the weight of intergenerational trauma.

Through this performance, I draw from that history to create a space of remembrance and care. It is experimental, interactive, and alive: a call to act, a gesture of radical care, and an invitation for everyone to recall their own experiences of displacement.

Each participant reads a portion of their displacement story as the others cover them in paper, silencing them, but their favorite plant emerges from the paper, and eventually they all break free and recite the rest of their stories in a strong chorus of multi-language voices.