The sale of citizenship is more commonly known as Golden Passports, or Citizenship-By-Investment. Estate agents sell recently developed apartments that, because of their price, allow the buyer to obtain the passport of that country. To understand how this institutionalised mobility is enacted I rehearsed such a purchase. Performing as an investor I accessed projects that would soon (not) house new citizens or their tenants. Within those viewings, model flats presented as homes whilst the agent and purchaser believed to care about the quality of the finish. Reality was suspended for the duration of the negotiation. Citizenship itself acts only as a means of access to a third country otherwise not granted by the original passport. This disconnect from the nation by the roles played emulates the arbitrariness of citizenship when it is tied to material form as capital. New builds become an outlier as citizenship is usually unseen, the emptiness of the nation state manifested in the failed utopia of new concrete. The nations where this played out remain unnamed.
Tudor Rhys Etchells
Tudor Rhys Etchells uses the photograph to challenge fictions created by legal systems. Working within such a bureaucracy in his previous role as a human rights lawyer inspires his closeness to the document and the brutally mundane. For him, the photographic medium, with its own cumbersome structures of viewing and representing, appears the best match for understanding processes that construct the imagined norms of our society. Embracing photography’s performative element, he deconstructs our conceptions of visual knowledge.
He achieved a Distinction in MA Documentary Photography at the University of South Wales during which he was awarded the Reginald Salisbury grant. Recently he was awarded an Arts Council of Wales Research and Development grant to fund a residency and his first solo exhibition at BayArt, Cardiff.
His work has been featured in the British Journal of Photography and the Financial Times Weekend Magazine.
He has spoken and performed at institutions around the world including, the British Council Paris, ISSP Riga, Ayn Istanbul.
He is a lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire and University of South Wales.
He is based in Cardiff and an associate artist and curator of BayArt gallery.
