Deserve It استهلها


Dec’23 – Present
Performance, Computational Poetry
Website
Gray Area & Gallery-O-Rama, San Francisco, CA



“A line formed all night as guests waited to experience Halim Madi’s interactive work, tucked in a corner of the venue, which required viewers to sit behind a computer and fill out a minefield of an immigration application. It scrambled their responses as the artist looked on, portraying a numb cog in a broken bureaucratic machine. Onlookers shared their own immigration experiences, with one woman muttering under her breath: It’s actually just like that” SF Gate

Deserve it was first performed in August 2024 at Gray Area as part of Halim’s art residency. It was presented again at Gallery-O-Rama in San Francisco.

Gray Area


Deserve it is a six-hour durational performance and immersive theater installation that delves into the labyrinthine journey of migration. Audience members step into the piece, complete metaphorical forms on a computer and make choices that are enacted by Halim themselves. Deserve It merges theater, technology, and poetry to create a 6-hour-long looping durational performance that challenges viewers to consider their role in and their experience of the dynamics of migration.

Deserve it is an invitation to explore themes of submission, salvation, and deviation, reflecting the complex relationship between migrants, institutions and the larger collective. The piece underscores the binary outcomes of the migration journey while inviting the audience to find liberation at the intersection of agency and surrender.
Gallery-O-Rama