Performing (In)visible Bodies in Unpacked:: Refugee Baggage Mohamadreza Babaee

Unpacked: Refugee Baggage is a multimedia installation by Mohamad Hafez and Ahmed Badr that seeks to humanize the word refugee. For this project, Badr has collected the stories of ten families resettled in the United States. Hafez uses the stories to create miniature dioramas that resemble the refugees' last memories of home. Understanding what each suitcase of the installation performs is at the center of my study in this article. Moreover, I inquire after the sociopolitical significance of performing refugee stories in the xenophobic context of the late 2010s in the United States.