Iman Tajik

Aliens Welcome Here?

Iman Tajik, 2021
Aliens Welcome Here? is site-specific installation by Iman Tajik, presented at Portobello Kilns (Bridge Street) on 11-12 September as part of Art Walk Porty Festival. The work invites viewers to rethink the language and assumptions around the word alien — both as something extraterrestrial and as a legal/immigration term.

Tajik’s piece transforms the old kiln structure into a visually striking form — one that at first glance might seem like a UFO landed in a familiar place. The dissonance between what we expect and what we see encourages us to pause and question: who is made to feel like an “alien” by immigration laws and socially sanctioned labels?

By drawing on the dual meanings of “alien”—creature from another planet, and someone “belonging to another country”—the work makes visible the dehumanising power of language. The term “alien,” embedded in British immigration law (for example, the UK Aliens Act of 1905, and later the British Nationality Act of 1981), becomes the lens through which the piece asks us to examine how society defines “us” and “other.”

Through this tension of form, metaphor, and context, Aliens Welcome Here? questions belonging, citizenship, and what it means to be “welcome,” especially in legal, social, and political contexts.More information: Art Walk Porty